TOWN  GEOLOGY 


The  RALPH  D.  REED  LIBRARY 

•0 

DEPARTMENT  OF  GEOLOGY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIF. 


TOWN    GEOLOGY 


SIAHflORMALSCHOGL, 

LOB  ANGELES, -:-CAL 


BY  THE  REV.  CHARLES   KINGSLEY, 

P.  L.  S.,     F.  G.  S. 

CANON  OF  CHESTER 


39-7? 


NEW  YORK : 
D.   APPLETON    AND    COMPANY. 

72     FIFTH     AVENUE. 
I895- 


Geology 
Library 


35 

KGI 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

PREFACE  .  vii 

I.    THE  SOIL  OF  THE   FIELD       ....  I 

II.    THE   PEBBLES   IN  THE  STREET       ...         36 

III.  THE  STONES   IN  THE  WALL  80 

IV.  THE  COAL  IN  THE   FIRE         .  .  .  .II? 
V.    THE  LIME  IN  THE  MORTAR             .           .  .       l6l 

VI.    THE  SLATES  ON  THE   ROOF  .  .  .      189 


PREFACE. 


little  book,  including  the  greater 
part  of  this  Preface,  has  shaped  itself  out 
of  lectures  given  to  the  young  men  of  the  city 
of  Chester.  But  it  does  not  deal,  in  its  present 
form,  with  the  geology  of  the  neighbourhood 
of  Chester  only.  I  have  tried  so  to  recast  it, 
that  any  townsman,  at  least  in  the  manufac- 
turing districts  of  England  and  Scotland,  may 
learn  from  it  to  judge,  roughly  perhaps,  but 
on  the  whole  accurately,  of  the  rocks  and  soils 
of  his  own  neighbourhood.  He  will  find,  it 
is  true,  in  these  pages,  little  or  nothing  about 
those  "Old  Red  Sandstones,"  so  interesting 


PREFACE. 


to  a  Scotsman  :  and  he  will  have  to  bear  in 
mind,  if  he  belong  to  the  coal-districts  of  Scot- 
land, that  the  "stones  in  the  wall"  there 
belong  to  much  older  rocks  than  those  "  New 
Red  Sandstones  "  of  which  this  book  treats  ; 
and  that  the  coal-measures  of  Scotland,  with 
the  volcanic  rocks  which  have  disturbed  them, 
are  often  very  different  in  appearance  to  the 
English  coal-measures.  But  he  will  soon 
learn  to  distinguish  the  relative  age  of  rocks 
"by  the  fossils  found  in  them,  which  he  can 
now,  happily,  study  in  many  local  museums  ; 
and  he  may  be  certain,  for  the  rest,  that  all 
rocks  and  soils  whatsover  which  he  may  meet 
have  been  laid  down  by  the  agents,  and  ac- 
cording to  the  laws,  which  I  have  tried  to  set 
forth  in  this  book ;  and  these  only  require,  for 
the  learning  of  them,  the  exercise  of  his  own 
observation  and  common  sense.  I  have  not 
tried  to  make  this  a  hand-book  of  geological 


PREFACE. 


facts.  Such  a  guide  (and  none  better)  the 
young  man  will  find  in  Sir  Charles  Lyell's 
"  Student's  Elements  of  Geology."  1  have 
tried  rather  to  teach  the  method  of  geology, 
than  its  facts ;  to  furnish  the  student  with  a 
key  to  all  geology,  rough  indeed  and  rudi- 
mentary, but  sure  and  sound  enough,  I 
trust,  to  help  him  to  unlock  most  geological 
problems  which  he  may  meet,  in  any  quarter 
of  the  globe.  But  young  men  must  remember 
always,  that  neither  this  book,  nor  all  the 
books  in  the  world,  will  make  them  geolo- 
gists. No  amount  of  book  learning  will  make 
a  man  a  scientific  man :  nothing  but  patient 
observation,  and  quiet  and  fair  thought  over 
what  he  has  observed.  He  must  go  out  for 
himself,  see  for  himself,  compare  and  judge 
for  himself,  in  the  field,  the  quarry,  the  cut- 
ting. He  must  study  rocks,  ores,  fossils,  in 
tne  nearest  museum;  and  thus  store  his  head. 


PREFACE. 


not  with  words,  but  with  facts.  He  must 
verify — as  far  as  he  can — what  he  reads  in 
books,  by  his  own  observation ;  and  be  slow 
to  believe  anything,  even  on  the  highest 
scientific  authority,  till  he  has  either  seen  it, 
or  something  like  enough  to  it  to  make  it 
seem  to  him  probable,  or  at  least  possible. 
So,  and  so  only,  will  he  become  a  scientific 
man,  and  a  good  geologist ;  and  acquire  that 
habit  of  mind  by  which  alone  he  can  judge 
fairly  and  wisely  of  facts  of  any  kind  what- 
soever. 

I  say — facts"  of  any  kind  whatsoever.  If 
any  of  my  readers  should  be  inclined  to  say 
to  themselves  —  Geology  may  be  a  very 
pleasant  study,  but  I  have  no  special  fancy 
for  it.  I  had  rather  learn  something  of  botany, 
astronomy,  chemistry,  or  what  not — I  shall 
answer — By  all  means.  Learn  any  branch 
of  Natural  Science  you  will.  It  matters  little 


PREFACE.  XI 


to  me  which  you  learn,  provided  you  learn 
one  at  least.  But  bear  in  mind,  and  settle 
it  in  your  hearts,  that  you  will  learn  no 
branch  of  science  soundly,  so  as  to  master 
it,  and  be  able  to  make  use  of  it,  unless  you 
acquire  that  habit  and  method  of  mind  which 
I  am  trying  to  teach  you  in  this  book.  I 
have  tried  to  teach  it  you  by  geology,  because 
geology  is,  perhaps,  the  simplest  and  the 
easiest  of  all  physical  sciences.  It  appeals 
more  than  any  to  mere  common  sense.  It 
requires  fewer  difficult  experiments,  and  ex- 
pensive apparatus.  It  requires  less  previous 
knowledge  of  other  sciences,  whether  pure 
or  mixed ;  at  least  in  its  rudimentary  stages. 
It  is  more  free  from  long  and  puzzling  Greek 
and  Latin  words.  It  is  specially,  the  poor 
man's  science.  But  if  you  do  not  like  it, 
study  something  else.  Only  study  that  as  you 
must  study  geology :  proceeding  from  the 


known  to  the  unknown  by  observation  and 
experiment. 

But  here  some  of  my  readers  may  ask,  as 
they  have  a  perfect  right  to  ask,  why  I  wish 
young  men  to  learn  Natural  Science  at  all  ? 
What  good  will  the  right  understanding  of 
geology,  or  of  astronomy  or  of  chemistry,  or 
of  the  plants  or  animals  which  they  meet — 
What  good,  I  say,  will  that  do  them  ? 

In  the  first  place,  they  need,  I  presume, 
occupation  after  their  hours  of  work.  If  any 
of  them  answer,  "We  do  not  want  occupa- 
tion, we  want  amusement.  Work  is  very 
dull,  and  we  want  something  which  will 
excite  our  fancy,  imagination,  sense  of  hu- 
mour. We  want  poetry,  fiction,  even  a  good 
laugh  or  a  game  of  play  " — I  shall  most  fully 
agree  with  them.  There  is  often  no  better 
medicine  for  a  hard-worked  body  and  mind 
than  a  good  laugh ;  and  the  man  who  can 


PREFACE.  X 

play  most  heartily  when  he  has  a  chance  of 
playing  is  generally  the  man  who  can  work 
most  heartily  when  he  must  work.  But  there 
is  certainly  nothing  in  the  study  of  physical 
science  to  interfere  with  genial  hilarity.  In- 
deed, some  solemn  persons  have  been  wont 
to  reprove  the  members  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation, and  specially  that  Red  Lion  Club, 
where  all  the  philosophers  are  expected  to 
lash  their  tails  and  roar,  of  being  somewhat 
too  fond  of  mere  and  sheer  fun,  after  the 
abstruse  papers  of  the  day  are  read  and 
discussed.  And  as  for  harmless  amusement, 
and  still  more  for  the  free  exercise  of  the 
fancy  and  the  imagination,  I  know  few 
studies  to  compare  with  Natural  History; 
with  the  search  for  the  most  beautiful  and 
curious  productions  of  Nature  amid  her  love- 
liest scenery,  and  in  her  freshest  atmosphere. 
I  have  known  again  and  again  working  men 


XIV  PREFACE. 

who  in  the  midst  of  smoky  cities  have  kept 
their  bodies,  their  minds,  and  their  hearts 
healthy  and  pure  by  going  out  into  the 
country  at  odd  hours,  and  making  collec- 
tions of  fossils,  plants,  insects,  birds,  or  some 
other  objects  of  natural  history ;  and  I  doubt 
not  that  such  will  be  the  case  with  some  of 
my  readers. 

Another  argument,  and  a  very  strong  one, 
in  favour  of  studying  some  branch  of  Natural 
Science  just  now  is  this — that  without  it  you 
can  hardly  keep  pace  with  the  thought  of  the 
world  around  you. 

Over  and  above  the  solid  gain  of  a  scien- 
tific habit  of  mind,  of  which  I  shall  speak 
presently,  the  gain  of  mere  facts,  the  in- 
creased knowledge  of  this  planet  on  which 
we  live,  is  very  valuable  just  now ;  valu- 
able certainly  to  all  who  do  not  wish  their 
children  and  their  younger  brothers  to 


PREFACE. 


know  more  about  the  universe  than  they 
do. 

Natural  Science  is  now  occupying  a  more 
and  more  important  place  in  education. 
Oxford,  Cambridge,  the  London  University, 
the  public  schools,  one  after  another,  are 
taking  up  the  subject  in  earnest;  so  are  the 
middle-class  schools ;  so,  I  trust,  will  all 
primary  schools  throughout  the  country ; 
and  I  hope  that  my  children,  at  least,  if  not 
I  myself,  will  see  the  day,  when  ignorance  of 
the  primary  laws  and  facts  of  science  will  be 
looked  on  as  a  defect,  only  second  to  igno- 
rance of  the  primary  laws  of  religion  and 
morality. 

I  speak  strongly,  but  deliberately.  It  does 
seem  to  me  strange,  to  use  the  mildest  word, 
that  people  whose  destiny  it  is  to  live,  even 
for  a  few  short  years,  on  this  planet  which 
we  call  the  earth,  and  who  do  not  at  all 


PREFACE. 


intend  to  live  on  it  as  hermits,  shutting  them- 
selves up  in  cells,  and  looking  on  death  as 
an  escape  and  a  deliverance,  but  intend  to 
live  as  comfortably  and  wholesomely  as  they 
can,  they  and  their  children  after  them — it 
seems  strange,  I  say,  that  such  people  should 
in  general  be  so  careless  about  the  consti- 
tution of  this  same  planet,  and  of  the  laws 
and  facts  on  which  depend,  not  merely  their 
comfort  and  their  wealth,  but  their  health  and 
their  very  lives,  and  the  health  and  the  lives 
of  their  children  and  descendants. 

I  know  some  will  say,  at  least,  to  them- 
selves, "  What  need  for  us  to  study  science  ? 
There  are  plenty  to  do  that  already ;  and  we 
shall  be  sure  sooner  or  later  to  profit  by  their 
discoveries ;  and  meanwhile  it  is  not  science 
which  is  needed  to  make  mankind  thrive, 
but  simple  common  sense." 

I  should  reply,  that  to  expect  to  profit  by 


PREFACE.  XVH 

other  men's  discoveries  when  you  do  not  pay 
for  them — to  let  others  labour  in  the  hope  of 
entering  into  their  labours,  is  not  a  very 
noble  or  generous  state  of  mind — comparable 
somewhat,  I  should  say,  to  that  of  the  fatting 
ox,  who  willingly  allows  the  farmer  to  house 
him,  till  for  him,  feed  him,  provided  only 
he  himself  may  lounge  in  his  stall,  and  eat, 
and  not  be  thankful.  There  is  one  difference 
in  the  two  cases,  but  only  one— that  while 
the  farmer  can  repay  himself  by  eating  the 
ox,  the  scientific  man  cannot  repay  himself 
by  eating  you;  and  so  never  gets  paid,  in 
most  cases,  at  all. 

But  as  for  mankind  thriving  by  common 
sense :  they  have  not  thriven  by  common 
sense,  because  they  have  not  used  their  com- 
mon sense  according  to  that  regulated  method 
which  is  called  science.  In  no  age,  in  no 
country,  as  yet,  have  the  majority  of  man- 


xviii  PREFACE, 

kind  been  guided,  I  will  not  say  by  the  love 
of  God,  and  by  the  fear  of  God,  but  even 
by  sense  and  reason.  Not  sense  and  reason, 
but  nonsense  and  unreason,  prejudice  and 
fancy,  greed  and  haste,  have  led  them  to 
such  results  as  were  to  be  expected — to 
superstitions,  persecutions,  wars,  famines, 
pestilence,  hereditary  diseases,  poverty,  waste 
— waste  incalculable,  and  now  too  often 
irremediable — waste  of  life,  of  labour,  of 
capital,  of  raw  material,  of  soil,  of  manure, 
of  every  bounty  which  God  has  bestowed 
on  man,  till,  as  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean, 
whole  countries,  some  of  the  finest  in  the 
world,  seem  ruined  for  ever :  and  all  because 
men  will  not  learn  nor  obey  those  physical 
laws  of  the  universe,  which  (whether  we  be 
conscious  of  them  or  not)  are  all  around  us, 
like  walls  of  iron  and  of  adamant — say  rather, 
like  some  vast  machine,  ruthless  though 


PREFACE. 


beneficent,  among  the  wheels  of  which  if  we 
entangle  ourselves  in  our  rash  ignorance, 
they  will  not  stop  to  set  us  free,  but  crush 
us,  as  they  have  crushed  whole  nations  and 
whole  races  ere  now,  to  powder.  Very  terri- 
ble, though  very  calm,  is  outraged  Nature. 

"  Though  the  mills  of  God  grind 

Slowly,  yet  they  grind  exceeding  small ; 
Though  He  sit,  and  wait  with  patience, 
With  exactness  grinds  He  all." 

It  is,  I  believe,  one  of  the  most  hopeful 
among  the  many  hopeful  signs  of  the  times, 
that  the  civilised  nations  of  Europe  and 
America  are  awakening,  slowly  but  surely,  to 
this  truth.  The  civilised  world  is  learning, 
thank  God,  more  and  more  of  the  importance 
of  physical  science;  year  by  year,  thank 
God,  it  is  learning  to  live  more  and  more 
according  to  those  laws  of  physical  science, 
which  are,  as  trie  great  Lord  Bacon  said  of 

2* 


XX  PREFACE. 

old,  none  other  than  "Vox  Dei  in  rebus 
revelata "  —  the  Word  of  God  revealed  in 
facts ;  and  it  is  gaining,  by  so  doing,  year 
by  year,  more  and  more  of  health  and 
wealth ;  of  peaceful  and  comfortable,  even 
of  graceful  and  elevating,  means  of  life  for 
fresh  millions. 

If  you  want  to  know  what  the  study  of 
physical  science  has  done  for  man,  look,  as  a 
single  instance,  at  the  science  of  sanatory 
ref  rm  :  the  science  which  does  not  merely  try 
to  cure  disease,  and  shut  the  stable-door  after 
the  horse  is  stolen,  but  tries  to  prevent  dis- 
ease ;  and,  thank  God,  is  succeeding  beyond 
our  highest  expectations.  Or  look  at  the 
actual  fresh  amount  of  employment,  of  sub- 
sistence, which  science  has,  during  the  last 
century,  given  to  men ;  and  judge  for  your- 
selves whether  the  study  of  it  be  not  one 
worthy  of  those  who  wish  to  help  themselves, 


PREFACE.  XXI 

and,  in  so  doing,  to  help  their  fellow-men. 
Let  me  quote  to  you  a  passage  from  an  essay 
urging  the  institution  of  schools  of  physical 
science  for  artisans,  which  says  all  which  I 
wish  to  say  and  more  : — 

"The  discoveries  of  voltaic  electricity, 
electro-  magnetism,  and  magnetic  electricity, 
by  Volta,  (Ersted,  and  Faraday,  led  to  the 
invention  of  electric  telegraphy  by  Wheat- 
stone  and  others,  and  to  the  great  manufac- 
tures of  telegraph  cables  and  telegraph  wire, 
and  of  the  materials  required  for  them.  The 
value  of  the  cargo  of  the  Great  Eastern  alone 
in  the  recent  Bombay  telegraph  expedition 
was  calculated  at  three  millions  of  pounds 
sterling.  It  also  led  to  the  employment  of 
thousands  of  operators  to  transmit  the  tele- 
graphic messages,  and  to  a  great  increase  of 
our  commerce  in  nearly  all  its  branches  by 
the  more  rapid  means  of  communication. 


PREFACE. 


The  discovery  of  Voltaic  electricity  further  led 
to  the  invention  of  electro-plating,  and  to  the 
employment  of  a  large  number  of  persons  in 
that  business.  The  numerous  experimental 
researches  on  specific  heat,  latent  heat,  the 
tension  of  vapours,  the  properties  of  water, 
the  mechanical  effect  of  heat,  &c.,  resulted 
in  the  development  of  steam-engines  and 
railways,  and  the  almost  endless  employments 
depending  upon  their  construction  and  use. 
About  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  persons  are 
employed  on  railways  alone  in  Great  Britain. 
The  various  original  investigations  on  the 
chemical  effects  of  light  led  to  the  invention 
of  photography,  and  have  given  employment 
to  thousands  of  persons  who  practise  that 
process,  or  manufacture  and  prepare  the 
various  material  and  articles  required  in  it. 
The  discovery  of  chlorine  by  Scheele  led  to 
the  invention  of  the  modern  processes  of 


PREFACE.  XX111 

bleac*hing,  and  to  various  improvements  in 
the  dyeing  of  the  textile  fabrics,  and  has 
given  employment  to  a  very  large  number  of 
our  Lancashire  operatives.  The  discovery  of 
chlorine  has  also  contributed  to  the  employ- 
ment of  thousands  of  printers,  by  enabling 
Esparto  grass  to  be  bleached  and  formed  into 
paper  for  the  use  of  our  daily  press.  The 
numerous  experimental  investigations  in  re- 
lation to  coal-gas  have  been  the  means  of 
extending  the  use  of  that  substance,  and  of 
increasing  the  employment  of  workmen  and 
others  connected  with  its  manufacture.  The 
discovery  of  the  alkaline  metals  by  Davy,  of 
cyanide  of  potassium,  of  nickel,  phosphorus, 
the  common  acids,  and  a  multitude  of  other 
substances,  have  led  to  the  employment  of  a 
whole  army  of  workmen  in  the  conversion 
of  those  substances  into  articles  of  utility, 
Ihe  foregoing  examples  might  be  greatly 


PREFACE. 


enlarged  upon,  and  a  great  many  others 
might  be  selected  from  the  sciences. of  physics 
and  chemistry :  but  those  mentioned  will 
suffice.  There  is  not  a  force  of  Nature,  nor 
scarcely  a  material  substance  that  we  employ, 
which  has  not  been  the  subject  of  several, 
and  in  some  cases  of  numerous,  original 
experimental  researches,  many  of  which  have 
resulted,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  in  in- 
creasing the  employment  for  workmen  and 
others." — Nature,  No.  25. 

"  All  this  may  be  very  true.  But  of  what 
practical  use  will  physical  science  be  to 
me  r " 

Let  me  ask  in  return,  Are  none  of  you 
going  to  emigrate  ?  If  you  have  courage 
and  wisdom,  emigrate  you  will,  some  of  you, 
instead  of  stopping  here  to  scramble  over 
each  other's  backs  for  .the  scraps,  like  black- 
beetles  in  a  kitchen.  And  if  you  emigrate, 


PREFACE. 


you  will  soon  find  out,  if  you  have  eyes  and 
common  sense,  that  the  vegetable  wealth  of 
the  world  is  no  more  exhausted  than  its 
mineral  wealth.  Exhausted  ?  Not  half  of  it 
— I  believe  not  a  tenth  of  it — is  yet  known. 
Could  I  show  you  the  wealth  which  I  have 
seen  in  a  single  Tropic  island,  not  sixty  miles 
square — precious  timbers,  gums,  fruits,  what 
not,  enough  to  give  employment  and  wealth 
to  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  wasting 
for  want  of  being  known  and  worked — then 
you  would  see  what  a  man  who  emigrates 
may  do,  by  a  little  sound  knowledge  of 
botany  alone. 

And  if  not.  Suppose  that  any  one  of  you, 
learning  a  little  sound  Natural  History, 
should  abide  here  in  Britain  to  your  life's 
end,  and  observe  nothing  but  the  hedge-row 
plants  :  he  would  find  that  there  is  much  more 
to  be  seen  in  those  mere  hedge-row  plants 


XXVI  PREFACE. 

than  he  fancies  now.  The  microscope  will 
reveal  to  him  in  the  tissues  of  any  wood, 
of  any  seed,  wonders  which  will  first  amuse 
him,  then  puzzle  him,  and  at  last  (I  hope)  awe 
him,  as  he  perceives  that  smallness  of  size 
interferes  in  no  way  with  perfection  of 
development,  and  that  "  Nature,"  as  has 
been  well  said,  "  is  greatest  in  that  which  is 
least."  And  more.  Suppose  that  he  went 
further  still.  Suppose  that  he  extended  his 
researches  somewhat  to  those  minuter  vege- 
table forms,  the  mosses,  fungi,  lichens  ; 
suppose  that  he  went  a  little  further  still, 
and  tried  what  the  microscope  would  show 
him  in  any  stagnant  pool,  whether  fresh 
water  or  salt,  of  Desmidiae,  Diatoms,  and 
all  those  wondrous  atomies  which  seem  as 
yet  to  defy  our  classification  into  plants  or 
animals.  Suppose  he  learnt  something  of 
this,  but  nothing  of  aught  else.  Would  he 


PREFACE.  XXV11 

have  gained  no  solid  wisdom  ?  He  would  be 
a  stupider  man  than  I  have  a  right  to  believe 
any  of  my  readers  to  be,  if  he  had  not  gained 
thereby  somewhat  of  the  most  valuable  of 
treasures,  namely,  that  inductive  habit  of 
mind ;  that  power  of  judging  fairly  of  facts, 
without  which  no  good  or  lasting  work  will 
be  done,  whether  in  physical  science,  in  social 
science,  in  politics,  in  philosophy,  in  philology, 
or  in  history. 

But  more  let  me  urge  you  to  study  Natural 
Science,  on  grounds  which  may  be  to  you  new 
and  unexpected — on  social,  I  had  almost  said 
on  political,  grounds. 

We  all  know,  and  I  trust  we  all  love,  the 
names  of  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Brotherhood. 
We  feel,  I  trust,  that  these  words  are  too 
beautiful  not  to  represent  true  and  just  ideas ; 
and  that  therefore  they  will  come  true,  and 
be  fulfilled,  somewhen,  somewhere,  somehow. 


XXV111  PREFACE. 


It  may  be  in  a  shape  very  different  from  that 
which  you,  or  I,  or  any  man  expects ;  but  still 
they  will  be  fulfilled. 

But  if  they  are  to  come  true,  it  is  we,  the 
individual  men,  who  must  help  them  to  come 
true  for  the  whole  world,  by  practising  them 

0 

ourselves,  when  and  where  we  can.  And  I 
tell  you — that  in  becoming  scientific  men, 
in  studying  science  and  acquiring  the  scien- 
tific habit  of  mind,  you  will  find  yourselves 
enjoying  a  freedom,  an  equality,  a  brother- 
hood, such  as  you  will  not  find  elsewhere  just 
now. 

Freedom:  what  do  we  want  freedom  for? 
For  this,  at  least ;  that  we  may  be  each  and 
all  able  to  think  what  we  choose  ;  and  to  say 
what  we  choose  also,  provided  we  do  not  say 
it  rudely  or  violently,  so  as  to  provoke  a 
breach  of  the  peace.  That  last  was  my  poor 
friend  Mr.  Buckle's  definition  of  freedom  of 


PREFACE.  XXIX 

speech.  That  was  the  only  limit  to  it  which 
he  would  allow ;  and  I  think  that  that  is  Mr. 
John  Stuart  Mill's  limit  also.  At  all  events, 
it  is  mine.  And  I  think  we  have  that  kind 
of  freedom  in  these  islands,  as  perfectly  as 
any  men  are  likely  to  have  it  on  this  earth. 

But  what  I  complain  of  is,  that  when  men 
have  got  the  freedom,  three  out  of  four  of 
them  will  not  use  it.  What  ? — some  one  will 
answer — Do  you  suppose  that  I  will  not  say 
what  I  choose,  and  that  I  dare  not  speak  my 
own  mind  to  any  man  ?  Doubtless.  But  are 
you  sure  first,  that  you  think  what  you  choose, 
or  only  what  some  one  else  chooses  for  you  ? 
Are  you  sure  that  you  make  up  your  own 
mind  before  you  speak,  or  let  some  one  else 
make  it  up  for  you  ?  Your  speech  may  be 
free  enough,  my  good  friend;  and  Heaven 
forbid  that  it  should  be  anything  else  :  but 
are  your  thoughts  free  likewise  ?  Are  you 


XXX  PREFACE. 

sure  that,  though  you  may  hate  bigotry  in 
others,  you  are  not  somewhat  of  a  bigot  your- 
self ?  That  you  do  not  look  at  only  one  side 
of  a  question,  and  that  the  one  which  pleases 
you  ?  That  you  do  not  take  up  your  opinions 
at  second  hand,  from  some  book  or  some 
newspaper,  which  after  all  only  reflects  your 
own  feelings,  your  own  opinions  ?  You  should 
ask  yourselves  that  question,  seriously  and 
often  :  "  Are  my  thoughts  really  free  ? "  No 
one  values  more  highly  than  I  do  the  advan- 
tage of  a  free  press.  But  you  must  remember 
always  that  a  newspaper  editor,  however 
honest  or  able,  is  no  more  infallible  than  the 
Pope ;  that  he  may,  just  as  you  may,  only  see 
one  side  of  a  question,  while  any  question  is 
sure  to  have  two  sides,  or  perhaps  three  or 
four  ;  and  if  you  only  see  the  side  which  suits 
you,  day  after  day,  month  after  month,  you 
must  needs  become  bigoted  to  it.  Your 


PREFACE.  XXXI 


thoughts  must  needs  run  in  one  groove. 
They  cannot  (as  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  would 
say)  "play  freely  round"  a  question;  and 
look  it  all  over,  boldly,  patiently,  rationally, 
charitably. 

And  I  tell  you  that  if  you,  or  I,  or  any  man, 
want  to  let  our  thoughts  play  freely  round 
questions,  and  so  escape  from  the  tendency  to 
become  bigoted  and  narrow-minded  which 
there  is  in  every  human  being,  then  we  must 
acquire  something  of  that  inductive  habit  of 
mind  which  the  study  of  Natural  Science 
gives.  It  is,  after  all,  as  Professor  Huxley 
says,  only  common  sense  well  regulated. 
But  then  it  is  well  regulated ;  and  how  pre- 
cious it  is,  if  you  can  but  get  it.  The  art  of 
seeing,  the  art  of  knowing  what  you  see ;  the 
art  of  comparing,  of  perceiving  true  like- 
nesses and  true  differences,  and  so  of  clas- 
sifying and  arranging  what  you  see  ;  the  art 


PREFACE. 


of  connecting  facts  together  in  your  own  mind 
in  chains  of  cause  and  eifect,  and  that  accu- 
rately, patiently,  calmly,  without  prejudice, 
vanity,  or  temper — this  is  what  is  wanted  for 
true  freedom  of  mind.  But  accuracy,  patience, 
freedom  from  prejudice,  carelessness  for  all 
except  the  truth,  whatever  the  truth  may  be — 
are  not  these  the  virtues  of  a  truly  free  spirit? 
Then,  as  I  said  just  now,  I  know  no  study  so 
able  to  give  that  free  habit  of  mind  as  the 
study  of  Natural  Science. 

Equality,  too :  whatever  equality  may  or 
may  not  be  just,  or  possible  :  this,  at  least,  is 
just,  and  I  hope  possible;  that  every  man, 
every  child,  of  every  rank,  should  have  an 
equal  chance  of  education ;  an  equal  chance 
of  developing  all  that  is  in  him  by  nature ;  an 
equal  chance  of  acquiring  a  fair  knowledge  of 
those  facts  of  the  universe  which  specially 
concern  him ;  and  of  having  his  reason  trained 


PREFACE.  XXX111 


to  judge  of  them.  I  say,  whatever  equal  rights 
men  may  or  may  not  have,  they  have  this 
right.  Let  every  boy,  every  girl,  have  an 
equal  and  sound  education.  If  I  had  my  way, 
I  would  give  the  same  education  to  the  child  of 
the  collier  and  to  the  child  of  the  peer.  I 
would  see  that  they  were  taught  the  same 
things,  and  by  the  same  method.  Let  them 
all  begin  alike,  say  I.  They  will  be  handi- 
capped heavily  enough  as  they  go  on  in  life, 
without  our  handicapping  them  in  their  first 
race.  Whatever  stable  they  come  out  of, 
whatever  promise  they  show,  let  them  all 
train  alike,  and  start  fair,  and  let  the  best 
colt  win. 

Well :  but  there  is  a  branch  of  education  in 
which,  even  now,  the  poor  man  can  compete 
fairly  against  the  rich ;  and  that  is,  Natural 
Science.  In  the  first  place,  the  rich,  blind  to 
their  own  interest,  have  neglected  it  hitherto 


XXXIV  PREFACE. 

in  their  schools ;  so  that  they  have  not  the 
start  of  the  poor  man  on  that  subject  which 
they  have  on  many.  In  the  next  place, 
Natural  Science  is  a  subject  which  a  man 
cannot  learn  by  paying  for  teachers.  Hs 
must  teach  it  himself,  by  patient  observation, 
by  patient  common  sense.  And  if  the  poor 
man  is  not  the  rich  man's  equal  in  those 
qualities,  it  must  be  his  own  fault,  not  his 
purse's.  Many  shops  have  I  seen  about  the 
world,  in  which  fools  could  buy  articles  more 
or  less  helpful  to  them ;  but  never  saw  I  yet 
an  observation  -  shop,  nor  a  common -sense 
shop  either.  And  if  any  man  says,  "We 
must  buy  books  :  "  I  answer,  a  poor  man  now 
can  obtain  better  scientific  books  than  a  duke 
or  a  prince  could  sixty  years  ago,  simply 
because  then  the  books  did  not  exist.  When 
I  was  a  boy  I  would  have  given  much,  or 
rather  my  lather  would  have  given  much,  if  I 


PREFACE. 


could  have  got  hold  of  such  scientific  books 
as  are  to  be  found  now  in  any  first-class  ele- 
mentary school.  And  if  more  expensive 
books  are  needed ;  if  a  microscope  or  appa- 
ratus is  needed  ;  can  you  not  get  them  by  the 
co-operative  method,  which  has  worked  so 
well  in  other  matters  ?  Can  you  not  form 
yourselves  into  a  Natural  Science  club,  for 
buying  such  things  and  lending  them  round 
among  your  members ;  and  for  discussion 
also,  the  reading  of  scientific  papers  of  your 
own  writing,  the  comparing  of  your  observa- 
tions, general  mutual  help  and  mutual  in- 
struction ?  Such  societies  are  becoming 
numerous  now,  and  gladly  should  I  see  one 
in  every  town.  For  in  science,  as  in  most 
matters,  "  As  iron  sharpeneth  iron,  so  a  man 
sharpeneth  the  countenance  of  his  friend." 

And  Brotherhood :  well,  if  you  want  that ; 
tf  you  want  to  mix  with  men,  and  men,  too, 

8* 


PREFACE. 


eminently  worth  mixing  with,  on  the  simple 
ground  that  "  a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that;"  if 
you  want  to  become  the  acquaintances,  and — 
if  you  prove  worthy — the  friends,  of  men  who 
will  be  glad  to  teach  you  all  they  know,  and 
equally  glad  to  learn  from  you  anything  you 
can  teach  them,  asking  no  questions  about 
you,  save,  first — Is  he  an  honest  student  of 
Nature  for  her  own  sake  ?  And  next — Is  he  a 
man  who  will  not  quarrel,  or  otherwise  behave 
in  an  unbrotherly  fashion  to  his  fellow-stu- 
dents •'' — If  you  want  a  ground  of  brotherhood 
with  men,  not  merely  in  these  islands,  but  in 
America,  on  the  Continent — in  a  word,  all 
over  the  world — such  as  rank,  wealth,  fashion, 
or  other  artificial  arrangements  of  the  world 
cannot  give  and  cannot  take  away;  if  you 
want  to  feel  yourself  as  good  as  any  man  in 
theory,  because  you  are  as  good  as  any  man 
in  practice,  except  those  who  are  better  than 


PR.JiFA.CE.  XXXVH 

you  in  the  same  line,  which  is  open  to  any 
and  every  man ;  if  you  wish  to  have  the  in- 
spiring and  ennobling  feeling  of  being  a 
brother  in  a  great  freemasonry  which  owns 
no  difference  of  rank,  of  creed,  or  of  nation- 
ality— the  only  freemasonry,  the  only  Inter- 
national League  which  is  likely  to  make  man- 
kind (as  we  all  hope  they  will  be  some  day) 
one — then  become  men  of  science.  Join  the 
freemasonry  in  which  Hugh  Miller,  the  poor 
Cromarty  stonemason,  in  which  Michael  Fa- 
raday, the  poor  bookbinder's  boy,  became 
the  companions  and  friends  of  the  noblest 
and  most  learned  on  earth,  looked  up  to  by 
them  not  as  equals  merely,  but  as  teachers 
and  guides,  because  philosophers  and  dis- 
coverers. 

Do  you  wish  to  be  great  ?     Then  be  great 

. 
with  true  greatness ;  which  is, — knowing  the 

facts  of  nature,  and  being  able  to  use  them. 


Jtl  PREFACE. 


modest  men.  M.en  who  are  aware  of  their 
own  vast  ignorance  compared  with  the  vast 
amount  that  there  is  to  be  learned  in  such  a 
universe  as  this.  Men  who  are  accustomed 
to  look  at  both  sides  of  a  question ;  who,  in- 
stead of  making  up  their  minds  in  haste 
like  bigots  and  fanatics,  wait  like  wise  men, 
for  more  facts,  and  more  thought  about  the 
facts.  In  one  word,  men  who  had  acquired 
just  the  habit  of  mind  which  the  study  of 
Natural  Science  can  give,  and  must  give; 
for  without  it  there  is  no  use  studying  Natural 
Science ;  and  the  man  who  has  not  got  that 
habit  of  mind,  if  he  meddles  with  science, 
will  merely  become  a  quack  and  a  charlatan, 
only  fit  to  get  his  bread  as  a  spirit- rapper,  or 
an  inventor  of  infallible  pills. 

And  when  I  saw  that,  I  said  to  myself — I 
will  train  myself,  by  Natural  Science,  to  the 
truly  rational,  and  therefore  truly  able  and 


PREFACE. 


useful,  habit  of  mind  ;  and  more,  1  will,  for 
it  is  my  duty  as  an  Englishman,  train  every 
Englishman  over  whom  I  can  get  influence 
in  the  same  scientific  habit  of  mind  ;  that  I 
may,  if  possible,  make  him,  too,  a  rational 
and  an  able  man. 

And,  therefore,  knowing  that  most  of  you, 
my  readers — probably  all  of  you,  as  you  ought 
and  must  if  you  are  Britons,  think  much  of 
social  and  political  questions — therefore,  I  say, 
I  entreat  you  to  cultivate  the  scientific  spirit 
by  which  alone  you  can  judge  justly  of  those 
questions.  I  ask  you  to  learn  how  to  "  conquer 
nature  by  obeying  her,"  as  the  great  Lord 
Bacon  said  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago. 
For  so  only  will  you  in  your  theories  and  your 
movements,  draw  "bills  which  nature  will 
honour" — to  use  Mr.  Carlyle's  famous  parable 
— because  they  are  according  to  her  unchang- 
ing laws,  and  not  have  them  returned  on  your 


PREFACE. 


hands,  as  too  many  theorists'  are,  with  "  no 
effects  "  written  across  their  backs. 

Take  my  advice  for  yourselves,  dear  readers, 
and  for  your  children  after  you ;  for,  believe 
me,  I  am  showing  you  the  way  to  true  and 
useful,  and,  therefore,  to  just  and  deserved 
power.  I  am  showing  you  the  way  to  be- 
come members  of  what  I  trust  will  be — what 
I  am  certain  ought  to  be — the  aristocracy  of 
the  future. 

I  say  it  deliberately,  as  a  student  of  society 
and  of  history.  Power  will  pass  more  and 
more,  if  all  goes  healthily  and  well,  into  the 
hands  of  scientific  men ;  into  the  hands  of 
those  who  have  made  due  use  of  that  great 
heirloom  which  the  philosophers  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  left  for  the  use  of  future  gene- 
rations, and  specially  of  the  Teutonic  race. 

For  the  rest,  events  seem  but  too  likely  to 
repeat  themselves  again  and  again  all  over 


PREFACE.  Xliii 


the  world,  in  the  same  hopeless  circle.  Aris- 
tocracies of  mere  birth  decay  and  die,  and 
give  place  to  aristocracies  of  mere  wealth ; 
and  they  again  to  "  aristocracies  of  genius/ 
which  are  really  aristocracies  of  the  noisiest, 
of  mere  scribblers  and  spouters,  such  as 
France  is  writhing  unaer  at  this  moment. 
And  when  these  last  have  blown  off  their 
steam,  with  mighty  roar,  but  without  moving 
the  engine  a  single  yard,  then  they  are  but 
too  likely  to  give  place  to  the  worst  of  all 
aristocracies,  the  aristocracy  of  mere  "order," 
which  means  organised  brute  force  and  mili- 
tary despotism.  And,  after  that,  what  can 
come,  save  anarchy,  and  decay,  and  social 
death  ? 

What  else  ? — unless  there  be  left  in  the 
nation,  in  the  society,  as  the  salt  of  the  land, 
to  keep  it  all  from  rotting,  a  sufficient  number 
of  wise  men  to  form  a  true  working  aristo- 


PREFACE. 


cracy,  an  aristocracy  of  sound  and  rational 
science  ?  If  they  be  strong  enough  (and  they 
are  growing  stronger  day  by  day  over  the 
civilised  world),  on  them  will  the  future  of 
that  world  mainly  depend.  They  will  rule, 
and  they  will  act — cautiously,  we  may  hope, 
and  modestly  and  charitably,  because  in 
learning  true  knowledge  they  will  have 
learnt  also  their  own  ignorance,  and  the 
vastness,  the  complexity,  the  mystery  of 
nature.  But  they  will  be  able  to  rule,  they 
will  be  able  to  act,  because  they  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  learn  the  facts  and  the  laws 
of  nature.  They  will  rule ;  and  their  rule, 
if  they  are  true  to  themselves,  will  be  one 
of  health  and  wealth,  and  peace,  of  prudence 
and  of  justice.  For  they  alone  will  be  able 
to  wield  for  the  benefit  of  man  the  bruet 
forces  of  nature ;  because  they  alone  will  have 
stooped  to  "  conquer  nature  by  obeying  her." 


PREFACE.  xlV 

So  runs  my  dream.  I  ask  my  young  readers 
to  help  towards  making  that  dream  a  fact,  by 
becoming  (as  many  of  them  as  feel  the  jus- 
tice of  my  words)  honest  and  earnest  students 
of  Natural  Science. 

But  now:  why  should  I,  as  a  clergyman, 
interest  myself  specially  in  the  spread  of 
Natural  Science  ?  Am  I  not  going  out  of 
my  proper  sphere  to  meddle  with  secular 
matters  ?  Ami  not,  indeed,  going  into 
a  sphere  out  of  which  I  had  better  keep 
myself,  and  all  over  whom  I  may  have 
influence  ?  For  is  not  science  antagonistic  to 
religion  ?  and,  if  so,  what  has  a  clergyman  to 
do,  save  to  warn  the  young  against  it,  instead 
of  attracting  them  towards  it  ? 

First,  as  to  meddling  with  secular  matters. 
I  grudge  that  epithet  of  secular  to  any  matter 
whatsoever.  But  I  do  more  ;  1  deny  it  to 
anything  which  God  has  made,  even  to  the 


PREFACE. 


tiniest  of  insects,  the  most  insignificant  atom 
of  dust.  To  those  who  believe  in  God,  and 
try  to  see  all  things  in  God,  the  most  minute 
natural  phenomenon  cannot  be  secular.  It 
must  be  divine  ;  I  say,  deliberately,  divine ; 
and  I  can  use  no  less  lofty  word.  The  grain 
01  dust  is  a  thought  of  God;  God's  power 
made  it ;  God's  wisdom  gave  it  whatsoever 
properties  or  qualities  it  may  possess.  God's 
providence  has  put  it  in  the  place  where  it  is 
now,  and  has  ordained  that  it  should  be  in 
that  place  at  that  moment,  by  a  train  of 
causes  and  effects  which  reaches  back  to  the 
very  creation  of  the  universe.  The  grain  of 
dust  can  no  more  go  from  God's  presence,  or 
flee  from  God's  Spirit,  than  you  or  I  can. 
If  it  go  up  to  the  physical  heaven,  and  float 
(as  it  actually  often  does)  far  above  the  clouds, 
in  those  higher  strata  of  the  atmosphere 
which  the  aeronaut  has  never  visited,  whither 


PREFACE.  Xlvii 

the  Alpine  snow-peaks  do  not  rise,  even 
there  it  will  be  obeying  physical  laws,  which 
we  term  hastily  laws  of  Nature,  but  which  are 
really  the  laws  of  God  :  and  if  it  go  down  into 
the  physical  abyss ;  if  it  be  buried  fathoms, 
miles,  below  the  surface,  and  become  an  atom 
of  some  rock  still  in  the  process  of  consolida- 
tion, has  it  escaped  from  God,  even  in  the 
bowels  of  the  earth  ?  Is  it  not  t>  ~;re  still 
obeying  physical  laws,  of  pressure,  heat, 
crystallisation,  and  so  forth,  which  are  laws 
of  God — the  will  and  mind  of  God  concerning 
particles  of  matter  ?  •  Only  look  at  all  created 
things  in  this  light — look  at  them  as  what 
they  are,  the  expressions  of  God's  mind  and 
will  concerning  this  universe  in  which  we 
live — "  the  Word  of  God,"  as  Bacon  says, 
"revealed  in  facts" — and  then  you  will  not 
fear  physical  science;  for  you  will  be  sure 
that,  the  more  you  know  of  physical  science, 


the  more  you  will  know  of  the  works  and  of 
the  will  of  God.  At  least,  you  will  be  in 
harmony  with  the  teaching  of  the  Psalmist : 
"  The  heavens,"  says  he,  "  declare  the  glory 
of  God;  and  the  firmament  showeth  his 
handiwork.  There  is  neither  speech  nor 
language  where  their  voices  are  not  heard 
among  them."  So  held  the  Psalmist  con- 
cerning astronomy,  the  knowledge  of  the 
heavenly  bodies ;  and  what  he  says  of  sun 
and  stars  is  true  likewise  of  the  flowers 
around  our  feet,  of  which  the  greatest 
Christian  poet  of  modern  times  has  said — 

"  To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  grows  may  give 
Thoughts  that  do  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 

So,  again,  you  will  be  in  harmony  with  the 
teaching  of  St.  Paul,  who  told  the  Romans 
"  that  the  invisible  things  of  God  are  clearly 
seen  from  the  creation  of  the  world,  being 
understood  by  the  things  that  are  made,  even 


PREFACE. 


his  eternal  power  and  Godhead;"  and  who 
told  the  savages  of  Lycaonia  that  "  God  had 
not  left  himself  without  witness,  in  that  He 
did  good  and  sent  men  rain  from  heaven,  and 
fruitful  seasons,  filling  men's  hearts  with  food 
and  gladness."  Rain  and  fruitful  seasons 
witnessed  to  all  men  of  a  Father  in  heaven. 
And  he  who  wishes  to  know  how  truly  St. 
Paul  spoke,  let  him  study  the  laws  which 
produce  and  regulate  rain  and  fruitful  seasons, 
wThat  we  now  call  climatology,  meteorology, 
geography  of  land  and  water.  Let  him  read 
that  truly  noble  Christian  work,  Maury's 
"  Physical  Geography  of  the  Sea ; "  and  see, 
if  he  be  a  truly  rational  man,  how  advanced 
science,  instead  of  disproving,  has  only 
corroborated  St.  Paul's  assertion,  and  how 
the  ocean  and  the  rain-cloud,  like  the  sun  and 
stars,  declare  the  glory  of  God.  And  if 
any  one  undervalues  the  sciences  which 


I  PREFACE. 


teach  us  concerning  stones  and  plants  and 
animals,  or  thinks  that  nothing  can  be 
learnt  from  them  concerning  God  —  allow 
one  who  has  been  from  childhood  only  a 
humble,  though  he  trusts  a  diligent  student  of 
these  sciences — allow  him,  I  say,  to  ask  in  all 
reverence,  but  in  all  frankness,  who  it  was 
who  said,  "Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field, 
how  they  grow."  "  Consider  the  birds  of  the 
air — and  how  vour  Heavenly  Father  feedeth 
them." 

Consider  them.  If  He  has  bid  you  do  so, 
can  you  do  so  too  much  ? 

I  know,  of  course,  the  special  application 
which  our  Lord  made  of  these  words.  But 
I  know,  too,  from  experience,  that  the  more 
you  study  nature,  in  all  her  forms,  the  more 
you  will  find  that  the  special  application  itself 
is  deeper,  wider,  more  literally  true,  more 
wonderful,  more  tender,  and  if  I  dare  use  such 


PREFACE. 


a  word,  more  poetic,  than  the  unscientific 
man  can  guess. 

But  let  me  ask  you  further — do  you  think 
that  our  Lord  in  that  instance,  and  in  those 
many  instances  in  which  He  drew  his  parables 
and  lessons  from  natural  objects,  was  leading 
men's  minds  on  to  dangerous  ground,  and 
pointing  out  to  them  a  subject  of  contempla- 
tion, in  the  laws  and  processes  of  the  natural 
world,  and  their  analogy  with  those  of  the 
spiritual  world,  the  kingdom  of  God — a  subject 
of  contemplation,  I  say,  which  it  was  not  safe 
to  contemplate  too  much  ? 

I  appeal  to  your  common  sense.  If  He  who 
spoke  these  words  were  (as  I  believe)  none  other 
than  the  Creator  of  the  universe,  by  whom  all 
things  were  made,  and  without  whom  nothing 
was  made  that  is  made,  do  you  suppose  that 
He  would  have  bid  you  to  consider  his  uni- 
verse, had  it  been  dangerous  for  you  to  do  so  ? 


PREFACE. 


serve  thee."  And  again,  "Thou  hast  made 
them  fast  for  ever  and  ever.  Thou  hast  given 
them  a  law  which  cannot  be  broken." 

So  does  the  Bible  (not  to  quote  over  again 
the  passages  which  I  have  already  given  you 
from  St  Paul,  and  One  greater  than  St.  Paul) 
declare  the  permanence  of  natural  laws,  and 
the  trustworthiness  of  natural  phenomena  as 
obedient  to  God.  And  so  does  the  Church  of 
England.  For  she  has  incorporated  into  her 
services  that  magnificent  hymn,  which  our 
forefathers  called  the  Song  of  the  Three  Chil- 
dren ;  which  is,  as  it  were,  the  very  flower  and 
crown  of  the  Old  Testament;  the  summing 
up  of  all  that  is  true  and  eternal  in  the  old 
Jewish  faith ;  as  true  for  us  as  for  them ;  as 
true  millions  of  years  hence  as  it  is  now — 
which  cries  to  all  heaven  and  earth,  from 
the  skies  above  our  heads  to  the  green  herb 
beneath  our  feet,  "  O  all  ye  works  of  the  Lord, 


PREFACE. 


bless  ye  the  Lord ;  praise  him  and  magnify 
Him  for  ever."  On  that  one  hymn  I  take  my 
stand.  That  is  my  charter  as  a  student  of 
Natural  Science.  As  long  as  that  is  sung  in 
an  English  Church,  I  have  a  right  to  investi- 
gate Nature  boldly  without  stint  or  stay,  and 
to  call  on  all  who  have  the  will,  to  investigate 
her  boldly  likewise,  and  with  Socrates  of  old, 
to  folow  the  Logos  whithersoever  it  leads. 

The  Logos.  I  must  pause  on  that  word. 
It  meant  at  first,  no  doubt,  simply  speech, 
argument,  reason.  In  the  mind  of  Socrates, 
it  had  a  deeper  meaning,  at  which  he  only 
dimly  guessed ;  which  was  seen  more  clearly 
by  Philo  and  the  Alexandrian  Jews ;  which 
was  revealed  in  all  its  fulness  to  the  beloved 
Apostle  St.  John,  till  he  gathered  speech  to 
tell  men  of  a  Logos,  a  Word,  who  was  in  the 
beginning  with  God,  and  was  God ;  by  whom 
all  things  were  made,  and  without  Him  was 
not  anything  made  that  was  made ;  and  how 


Ivi  PREFACE. 


in  Him  was  life,  and  the  life  was  the  light  of 
men ;  and  that  He  was  none  other  than  Jesus 
Christ  our  Lord. 

Yes,  that  is  the  truth.  And  to  that  truth  no 
man  can  add,  and  from  it  no  man  can  take 
away.  And  as  long  as  we  believe  that — as 
long  as  we  believe  that  in  His  light  alone  can 
we  see  light — as  long  as  we  believe  that  the 
life  around  us,  whether  physical  or  spiritual, 
is  given  by  Him  without  whom  nothing  is 
made — so  long  we  shall  not  fear  to  meet  Light, 
so  long  we  shall  not  fear  to  investigate  Life; 
for  we  shall  know,  however  strange  or  novel, 
beautiful  or  awful,  the  discoveries  we  may 
make  may  be,  we  are  only  following  the  Word 
whithersoever  He  may  lead  us ;  and  that  He 
can  never  lead  us  amiss. 


THE  SOIL  OF  THE  FIELD. 

TV  IT  Y  dear  readers,  let  me,  before  touching 
on  the  special  subject  of  this  paper,  say 
a  few  words  on  that  of  the  whole  series. 

It  is  geology :  that  is,  the  science  which 
explains  to  us  the  rind  of  the  earth  ;  of  what 
it  is  made  ;  how  it  has  been  made.  It  tells  us 
nothing  of  the  mass  of  the  earth.  That  is, 
properly  speaking,  an  astronomical  question. 
If  I  may  be  allowed  to  liken  this  earth  to  a 
fruit,  then  astronomy  will  tell  us — when  it 
knows — how  the  fruit  grew,  and  what  is  inside 
the  fruit.  Geology  can  only  tell  us  at  most 
how  its  rind,  its  outer  covering,  grew,  and  of 
what  it  is  composed  ;  a  very  small  part, 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


doubtless,  of  all  that  is  to  be  known  about  this 
planet. 

But,  as  it  happens,  the  mere  rind  of  this 
earth-fruit,  which  has,  countless  ages  since, 
dropped,  as  it  were,  from  tho  Bosom  of  God, 
the  Eternal  Fount  of  Life — the  mere  rind  of 
this  earth-fruit,  I  say,  is  so  beautiful  and  so 
complex,  that  it  is  well  worth  our  awful  and 
reverent  study.  It  has  been  well  said,  in- 
deed, that  the  history  of  it,  which  we  call 
geology,  would  be  a  magnificent  epic  poem, 
were  there  only  any  human  interest  in  it : 
did  it  deal  with  creatures  more  like  ourselves 
than  stones,  and  bones,  and  the  dead  relics 
of  plants  and  beasts.  Whether  there  be  no 
human  interest  in  geology ;  whether  man 
did  not  exist  on  the  earth  during  ages 
which  have  seen  enormous  geological 
changes,  is  becoming  more  and  more  au 
open  question. 


THE     SOIL     OF    THE     FIELD. 


But  meanwhile  all  must  agree  that  there 
is  matter  enough  for  interest — nay,  room 
enough  for  the  free  use  of  the  imagination, 
in  a  science  which  tells  of  the  growth  and 
decay  of  whole  mountain-ranges,  continents, 
oceans,  whole  tribes  and  worlds  of  plants  and 
animals. 

And  yet  it  is  not  so  much  for  the  vastness 
and  grandeur  of  those  scenes  of  the  distant 
past,  to  which  the  science  of  geology  intro- 
duces us,  that  I  value  it  as  a  study,  and  wish 
earnestly  to  awaken  you  to  its  beauty  and 
importance.  It  is  because  it  is  the  science 
from  which  you  will  learn  most  easily  a  sound 
scientific  habit  of  thought.  I  say  most  easily ; 
and  for  these  reasons.  The  most  important 
facts  of  geology  do  not  require,  to  discover 
them,  any  knowledge  of  mathematics  or  of 
chemical  analysis ;  they  may  be  studied  in 
every  bank,  every  grot,  every  quarry,  every 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


railway-cutting,  by  any  one  who  has  eyes  and 
common  .sense,  and  who  chooses  to  copy  the 
late  illustrious  Hugh  Miller,  who  made  himself, 
a  great  geologist  out  of  a  poor  stonemason. 
Next,  its  most  important  theories  are  not,  or 
need  not  be,  wrapped  up  in  obscure  Latin 
and  Greek  terms.  They  may  be  expressed 
in  the  simplest  English,  because  they  are 
discovered  by  simple  common  sense.  And 
thus  geology  is  (or  ought  to  be),  in  popular 
parlance,  the  people's  science — the  science 
by  studying  which,  the  man  ignorant  of  Latin, 
Greek,  mathematics,  scientific  chemistry,  can 
yet  become— as  far  as  his  brain  enables  him 
— a  truly  scientific  man. 

But  how  shall  we  learn  science  by  mere 
common  sense  ? 

First.  Always  try  to  explain  the  unknown 
by  the  known.  If  you  meet  something  which 
you  have  not  seen  before,  then  think  of  the 


THE     SOIL    OF    THE     FIELD. 


thing  most  like  it  which  you  have  seen 
before ;  and  try  if  that  which  you  know  ex- 
plains the  one  will  not  explain  the  other  also. 
Sometimes  it  will ;  sometimes  it  will  not. 
But  if  it  will,  no  one  has  a  right  to  ask  you 
to  try  any  other  explanation. 

Suppose,  for  instance,  that  you  found  a 
dead  bird  on  the  top  of  a  cathedral  tower, 
and  were  asked  how  you  thought  it  had  got 
there.  You  would  say,  "  Of  course,  it  died  up 
here.1'  But  if  a  friend  said,  "  Not  so ;  it 
dropped  from  a  balloon,  or  from  the  clouds  ;  " 
and  told  you  the  prettiest  tale  of  how  the 
bird  came  to  so  strange  an  end,  you  would 
answer,  "  No,  no ;  I  must  reason  from  what 
I  know.  I  know  that  birds  haunt  the  cathe- 
dral tower ;  I  know  that  birds  die ;  and 
therefore,  let  your  story  be  as  pretty  as  it 
may,  my  common  sense  bids  me  take  the 
simplest  explanation,  and  say — it  died  here." 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


In  saying  that,  you  would  be  talking1  scien- 
tifically. You  would  have  made  a  fair  and 
sufficient  induction  fas  it  is  called)  from  the 
facts  about  birds'  habits  and  birds'  deaths 
which  you  knew. 

But  suppose  that  when  you  took  the  bird 
up  you  found  that  it  was  neither  a  jackdaw, 
nor  a  sparrow,  nor  a  swallow,  as  you  ex- 
pected, but  a  humming-bird.  Then  you 
would  be  adrift  again.  The  fact  of  it  being  a 
humming-bird  would  be  a  new  fact  which 
you  had  not  taken  into  account,  and  for 
which  your  old  explanation  was  not  sufficient ; 
and  you  would  have  to  try  a  new  induction — 
to  use  your  common  sense  afresh — saying, 
"I  have  not  to  explain  merely  how  a  dead 
bird  got  here,  but  how  a  dead  humming- 
bird." 

And  now,  if  your  imaginative  friend  chimed 
in  triumphantly  with,  "Do  you  not  see  that 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  J 

I  was  right  after  all  ?  Do  you  not  see  that 
it  fell  from  the  clouds  ?  That  it  was  swept 
away  hither,  all  the  way  from  South  America, 
by  some  south-westerly  storm,  and  wearied 
out  at  last,  dropt  here  to  find  rest,  as  in  a 
sacred  place  ? "  what  would  you  answer  ? 
"  My  friend,  that  is  a  beautiful  imagination  : 
but  I  must  treat  it  only  as  such,  as  long  as 
I  can  explain  the  mystery  more  simply  by 
facts  which  I  do  know.  I  do  not  know  that 
humming  -  birds  can  be  blown  across  the 
Atlantic  alive.  I  do  know  that  they  are 
actually  brought  across  the  Atlantic  dead; 
are  stuck  in  ladies'  hats.  I  know  that  ladies 
visit  the  cathedral :  and  odd  as  the  accident 
is,  I  prefer  to  believe,  till  I  get  a  better 
explanation,  that  the  humming  -  bird  has 
simply  dropped  out  of  a  lady's  hat."  There, 
again,  you  would  be  speaking  common  sense; 
and  using,  too,  sound  inductive  method ; 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


trying  to  explain  what  you  do  not  know 
from  what  you  do  know  already. 

Now,   I   ask   of  you   to   employ  the   same 
common  sense  when  you  read  and  think  of 

geology. 

It  is  very  necessary  to  do  so.     For  in  past 

times  men  have  tried  to  explain  the  making 
of  the  world  around  them,  its  oceans,  rivers, 
mountains,  and  continents,  by  I  know  not 
what  of  fancied  cataclysms  and  convulsions 
of  nature ;  explaining  the  unknown  by  the 
still  more  unknown,  till  some  of  their  geo- 
logical theories  were  no  more  rational,  be- 
cause no  more  founded  on  known  facts,  than 
that  of  the  New  Zealand  Maories,  who  hold 
that  some  god,  when  fishing,  fished  up  their 
islands  out  of  the  bottom  of  the  ocean.  But 
a  sounder  and  wiser  school  of  geologists  now 
reigns ;  the  father  of  whom,  in  England  at 
least,  is  the  venerable  Sir  Charles  Lyell.  He 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  Q 

was  almost  the  first  of  Englishmen  who  taught 
us  to  see — what  common  sense  tells  us — that 
the  laws  which  we  see  at  work  around  us  now 
have  been  most  probably  at  work  since  the 
creation  of  the  world ;  and  that  whatever 
changes  may  seem  to  have  taken  place  in 
past  ages,  and  in  ancient  rocks,  should  be 
explained,  if  possible,  by  the  changes  which 
are  taking  place  now  in  the  most  recent 
deposits — in  the  soil  of  the  field. 

And  in  the  last  forty  years — since  that 
great  and  sound  idea  has  become  rooted  in 
the  minds  of  students,  and  specially  of  English 
students,  geology  has  thriven  and  developed, 
perhaps  more  than  any  other  science;  and 
has  led  men  on  to  discoveries  far  more  really 
astonishing  and  awful  than  all  fancied  con- 
vulsions and  cataclysms. 

I  have  planned  this  series  of  papers,  there- 
fore, on  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  method.  I  have 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


begun  by  trying  to  teach  a  little  about  the 
part  of  the  earth's  crust  which  lies  nearest 
us,  which  we  see  most  often ;  namely,  the 
soil ;  intending,  if  my  readers  do  me  the  honour 
to  read  the  papers  which  follow,  to  lead  them 
downward,  as  it  were,  into  the  earth ;  deeper 
and  deeper  in  each  paper,  to  rocks  and 
minerals  which  are  probably  less  known  to 
them  than  the  soil  in  the  fields.  Thus  you 
will  find  I  shall  lead  you,  or  try  to  lead  you 
on,  throughout  the  series,  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown,  and  show  you  how  to  explain 
the  latter  by  the  former.  Sir  Charles  Lyell 
has,  I  see,  in  the  new  edition  of  his  "  Student's 
Elements  of  Geology,"  begun  his  book  with 
the  uppermost,  that  is,  newest,  strata,  or 
layers  ;  and  has  gone  regularly  downwards  in 
the  course  of  the  book  to  the  lowest  or  earliest 
strata ;  and  I  shall  follow  his  plan. 

I   must   ask  you  meanwhile   to  remember 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD. 


one  law  or  rule,  which  seems  to  me  founded 
on  common  sense,  namely,  that  the  upper- 
most strata  are  really  almost  always  the 
newest;  that  when  two  or  more  layers, 
whether  of  rock  or  earth  —  or  indeed  two 
stones  in  the  street,  or  two  sheets  on  a  bed, 
or  two  books  on  a  table — any  two  or  more 
lifeless  things,  in  fact,  lie  one  on  the  other, 
then  the  lower  one  wTas  most  probably  put 
there  first,  and  the  upper  one  laid  down  on 
the  lower.  Does  that  seem  to  you  a  truism  ? 
Do  I  seem  almost  impertinent  in  asking  you 
to  remember  it  ?  '  So  much  the  better.  I 
shall  be  saved  unnecessary  trouble  hereafter. 

But  some  one  may  say,  and  will  have  a 
right  to  say,  "  Stop — the  lower  thing  may 
have  been  thrust  under  the  upper  one."  Quite 
true :  and  therefore  I  said  only  that  the 
lower  one  was  most  probably  put  there  first. 
And  I  said  "most  probably,"  because  it  is 

5* 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


most  probable  that  in  nature  we  should  find 
things  done  by  the  method  which  costs  least 
force,  just  as  you  do  them.  I  will  warrant 
that  when  you  want  to  hide  a  thing,  you  lay 
something  down  on  it  ten  times  for  once  that 
you  thrust  it  under  something  else.  You  may 
say,  "  What  ?  When  I  want  to  hide  a  paper, 
say,  under  the  sofa-cover,  do  I  not  thrust  it 
under  ? "  No,  you  lift  up  the  cover,  and  slip 
the  paper  in,  and  let  the  cover  fall  on  it 
again.  And  so,  even  in  that  case,  the  paper 
has  got  into  its  place  first. 

Now  why  is  this  ?  Simply  because  in 
laying  one  thing  on  another  you  only  move 
weight.  In  thrusting  one  thing  under 
another,  you  have  not  only  to  move  weight, 
but  to  overcome  friction*  That  is  why  you 
do  it,  though  you  are  hardly  aware  of  it : 
simply  because  so  you  employ  less  force,  and 
take  less  trouble. 


THE     SOIL    OF    THE     FIELD.  13 

And  so  do  clays  and  sands  and  stones. 
They  are  laid  down  on  each  other,  and  not 
thrust  under  each  other,  because  thus  less 
force  is  expended  in  getting  them  into  place. 

There  are  exceptions.  There  are  cases  in 
which  nature  does  try  to  thrust  one  rock 
under  another.  But  to  do  that  she  requires  a 
force  so  enormous,  compared  with  what  is 
employed  in  laying  one  rock  on  another,  that 
(so  to  speak)  she  continually  fails ;  and 
instead  of  producing  a  volcanic  eruption, 
produces  only  an  earthquake.  Of  that  I 
may  speak  hereafter,  and  may  tell  you,  in 
good  time,  how  to  distinguish  rocks  which 
have  been  thrust  in  from  beneath,  from  rocks 
which  have  been  laid  down  from  above,  as 
every  rock  between  London  and  Birmingham 
or  Exeter  has  been  laid  down.  That  1  only 
assert  now.  But  I  do  not  wish  you  to  take 
it  on  trust  from  me.  I  wish  to  prove  it  to 


14  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

you  as  I  go  on,  or  to  do  what  is  far  better 
for  you  :  to  put  you  in  the  way  of  proving 
it  for  yourselves,  by  using  your  common 
sense. 

At  the  risk  of  seeming  prolix,  I  must  say 
a  few  more  words  on  this  matter.  I  have 
special  reasons  for  it.  Until  I  can  get  you 
to  "  let  your  thoughts  play  freely  "  round  this 
question  of  the  superposition  of  soils  and 
rocks,  there  will  be  no  use  in  my  going  on 
with  these  papers. 

Suppose  then  (to  argue  from  the  known 
to  the  unknown)  that  you  were  watching  men 
cleaning  out  a  pond.  Atop,  perhaps,  they 
would  come  to  a  layer  of  soft  mud,  and  under 
that  to  a  layer  of  sand.  Would  not  common 
sense  tell  you  that  the  sand  was  there  first, 
and  that  the  water  had  laid  down  the  mud  on 
the  top  of  it?  Then,  perhaps,  they  might 
come  to  a  layer  of  dead  leaves.  Would  not 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD. 


common  sense  tell  you  that  the  leaves  were 
there  before  the  sand  above  them  ?  Then, 
perhaps,  to  a  layer  of  mud  again.  Would 
not  common  sense  tell  you  that  the  mud  was 
there  before  the  leaves  ?  And  so  on  down  to 
the  bottom  of  the  pond,  where,  lastly,  I 
think  common  sense  would  tell  you  that  the 
bottom  of  the  pond  was  there  already,  before 
all  the  layers  which  were  laid  down  on  it. 
Is  not  that  simple  common  sense  ? 

Then  apply  that  reasoning  to  the  soils  and 
rocks  in  any  spot  on  earth.  If  you  made  a 
deep  boring,  and  found,  as  .  you  would  in 
many  parts  of  this  kingdom,  that  the  boring, 
after  passing  through  the  soil  of  the  field, 
entered  clays  or  loose  sands,  you  would  say 
the  clays  were  there  before  the  soil.  If  it 
then  went  down  into  sandstone,  you  would 
say  —  would  you  not  r  —  that  sandstone  must 
have  been  here  before  the  clay;  and  however 


l6  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

thick — even  thousands  of  feet — it  might  be, 
that  would  make  no  difference  to  your  judg- 
ment. If  next  the  boring  came  into  quite 
different  rocks ;  into  a  different  sort  of  sand- 
stone and  shales,  and  among  them  beds  of 
coal,  would  you  not  say — These  coal-beds 
must  have  been  here  before  the  sandstones  ? 
And  if  you  found  in  those  coal-beds  dead 
leaves  and  stems  of  plants,  would  you  not 
say — Those  plants  must  have  been  laid  down 
here  before  the  layers  above  them,  just  as  the 
dead  leaves  in  the  pond  were  ? 

If  you  then  came  to  a  layer  of  limestone, 
would  you  not  say  the  same  ?  And  if  you 
found  that  limestone  full  of  shells  and  corals, 
dead,  but  many  of  them  quite  perfect,  some 
of  the  corals  plainly  in  the  very  place  in 
which  they  grew,  would  you  not  say — These 
creatures  must  have  lived  down  here  before 
the  coal  was  laid  on  top  of  them  ?  And 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD. 


if,  lastly,  below  the  limestone  you  came  to  a 
bottom  rock  quite  different  again,  would  you 
not  say  —  The  bottom  rock  must  have  been 
here  before  the  rocks  on  the  top  of  it  ? 

And  if  that  bottom  rock  rose  up  a  few 
miles  off,  two  thousand  feet,  or  any  other 
height,  into  hills,  what  would  you  say  then  ? 
Would  you  say,  "Oh,  but  the  rock  is  not 
bottom  rock  ;  is  not  under  the  limestone  here, 
but  higher  than  it.  So  perhaps  in  this  part 
it  has  made  a  shift,  and  the  highlands  are 
younger  than  the  lowlands  ;  for  see,  they 
rise  so  much  higher  ?  "  Would  not  that  be 
about  as  wise  as  to  say  that  the  bottom  of 
the  pond  was  not  there  before  the  pond 
mud,  because  the  banks  round  the  pond 
rose  higher  than  the  mud  ? 

NOWT  for  the  soil  of  the  field. 

If  we  can  understand  a  little  about  it,  what 
it  is  made  of,  and  how  it  got  there,  we  shall 


l8  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

perhaps  be  on  the  right  road  toward  under- 
standing what  all  England — and,  indeed,  the 
crust  of  this  whole  planet — is  made  of;  and 
how  its  rocks  and  soils  got  there. 

But  we  shall  best  understand  how  the  soil 
in  the  field  was  made  by  reasoning,  as  I  have 
said,  from  the  known  to  the  unknown.  What 
do  I  mean  ?  This.  On  the  uplands  are  fields 
in  which  the  soil  is  already  made.  You  do 
not  know  how?  Then  look  for  a  field  in 
which  the  soil  is  still  being  made.  There 
are  plenty  in  every  lowland.  Learn  how  it 
is  being  made  there ;  apply  the  knowledge 
which  you  learn  from  them  to  the  upland 
fields  which  are  already  made. 

If  there  is,  as  there  usually  is,  a  river- 
meadow,  or  still  better,  an  sestuary,  near  your 
town,  you  have  every  advantage  for  seeing 
soil  made.  Thousands  of  square  feet  of  fresh- 
made  soil  spread  between  your  town  and  the 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD. 


sea;  thousands  more  are  in  process  of  being 
made. 

"You  will  see  now  why  I  have  begun  with 
the  soil  in  the  field;  because  it  is  the  upper- 
most, and  therefore  latest,  of  all  the  layers  ; 
and  also  for  this  reason,  that,  if  Sir  Charles 
Lyell's  theory  be  true  —  as  it  is  —  then  the  soils 
and  rocks  below  the  soil  of  the  field  may  have 
been  made  in  the  very  same  way  in  which 
the  soil  of  the  field  is  made.  If  so,  it  is  well 
worth  our  while  to  examine  it. 

You  all  know  from  whence  the  soil  comes 
which  has  filled  up,  in  the  course  of  ages, 
the  great  sestuaries  below  London,  Stirling, 
Chester,  or  Cambridge. 

It  is  river  mud  and  sand.  The  river,  helped 
by  tributary  brooks  right  and  left,  has  brought 
down  from  the  inland  that  enormous  mass. 
You  know  that.  You  know  that  every  flood 

and  freshet  brings  a  fresh  load,  either  of  fine 
4 


»O  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

mud  or  of  fine  sand,  or  possibly  some  of  it 
peaty  matter  out  of  distant  hills.  Here  is 
one  indisputable  fact  from  which  to  start. 
Let  us  look  for  another. 

How  does  the  mud  get  into  the  river  ?  The 
rain  carries  it  thither. 

If  you  wish  to  learn  the  first  elements  of 
geology  by  direct  experiment,  do  this.  The 
next  rainy  day — the  harder  it  rains  the  better 
— instead  of  sitting  at  home  over  the  fire, 
and  reading  a  book  about  geology,  put  on 
a  macintosh  and  thick  boots,  and  get  away, 
I  care  not  whither,  provided  you  can  find 
there  running  water.  If  you  have  not  time 
to  get  away  to  a  hilly  country,  then  go  to  the 
nearest  bit  of  turnpike  road,  or  the  nearest 
sloping  field,  and  see  in  little  how  whole  con- 
tinents are  made,  and  unmade  again.  Watch 
the  rain  raking  and  sifting  with  its  million 
delicate  fingers,  separating  the  finer  particles 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  21 

from  the  coarser,  dropping  the  latter  as  soon 
as  it  can,  and  carrying  the  former  downward 
with  it  toward  the  sea.  Follow  the  nearest 
roadside  drain  where  it  runs  into  a  pond,  and 
see  how  it  drops  the  pebbles  the  moment  it 
enters  the  pond,  and  then  the  sand  in  a  fan- 
shaped  heap  at  the  nearest  end ;  but  carries 
the  fine  mud  on,  and  holds  it  suspended,  to 
be  gradually  deposited  at  the  bottom  in  the 
still  water  :  and  say  to  yourself — Perhaps  the 
sands  which  cover  so  many  inland  tracts  wrere 
dropped  by  water,  very  near  the  shore  of  a 
lake  or  sea,  and  by  rapid  currents.  Per- 
haps, again,  the  brick  clays,  which  are  often 
mingled  with  these  sands,  were  dropped,  like 
the  mud  in  the  pond,  in  deeper  water  farther 
from  the  shore,  and  certainly  in  still  water. 
But  more.  Suppose  once  more,  then,  that 
looking  and  watching  a  pond  being  cleared 
out,  under  the  lowest  layer  of  mud,  you  found 


2jJ  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

— as  you  would  find  in  any  of  those  magnifi- 
cent reservoirs  so  common  in  the  Lancashire 
hills — a  layer  of  vegetable  soil,  with  grass 
and  brushwood  rooted  in  it.  What  would 
you  say  but — The  pond  has  not  been  always 
full.  It  has  at  some  time  or  other  been  dry 
enough  to  let  a  whole  copse  grow  up  in- 
side it? 

And  if  you  found — as  you  will  actually  find 
along  some  English  shores — under  the  sand 
hills,  perhaps  a  bed  of  earth  with  shells  and 
bones  ;  under  that  a  bed  of  peat ;  under  that 
one  of  blue  silt ;  under  that  a  buried  forest, 
with  the  trees  upright  and  rooted;  under 
that  another  layer  of  blue  silt  full  of  roots 
and  vegetable  fibre ;  perhaps  under  that  again 
another  old  land  surface  with  trees  again 
growing  in  it ;  and  under  all  the  main  bottom 
clay  of  the  district — What  would  common 
sense  tell  you  ?  I  leave  you  to  discover  for 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  23 

yourselves.  It  certainly  would  not  tell  you 
that  those  trees  were  thrust  in  there  by  a 
violent  convulsion,  or  that  all  those  layers 
were  deposited  there  in  a  few  days,  or  even  a 
few  years,  and  you  might  safely  indulge  in 
speculations  about  the  antiquity  of  the  aestuary, 
and  the  changes  which  it  has  undergone, 
with  which  I  will  not  frighten  you  at  present. 

It  will  be  fair  reasoning  to  argue  thus. 
You  may  not  be  always  right  in  your  con- 
clusion, but  still  you  will  be  trying  fairly  to 
explain  the  unknown  by  the  known. 

But  have  Rain  and  Rivers  alone  made  the 
soil? 

How  very  much  they  have  done  toward 
making  it  you  will  be  able  to  judge  for  your- 
selves, if  you  will  read  the  sixth  chapter  of 
Sir  Charles  Lyell's  new  "  Elements  of  Geo- 
logy," or  the  first  hundred  pages  of  that 
admirable  book,  De  la  Heche's  "Geological 


•4  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

Observer;"  and  last,  but  not  least,  a  very 
clever  little  book  called  "  Rain  and  Rivers," 
by  Colonel  George  Greenwood. 

But  though  rain,  like  rivers,  is  a  carrier  of 
soil,  it  is  more.  It  is  a  maker  of  soil,  like- 
wise ;  and  by  it  mainly  the  soil  of  an  upland 
field  is  made,  whether  it  be  carried  down  to 
the  sea  or  not. 

If  you  will  look  into  any  quarry  you  will 
see  that  however  compact  the  rock  may  be 
a  few  feet  below  the  surface,  it  becomes,  in 
almost  every  case,  rotten  and  broken  up  as 
it  nears  the  upper  soil ;  till  you  often  cannot 
tell  where  the  rock  ends  and  the  soil  begins. 

Now  this  change  has  been  produced  by 
rain.  First,  mechanically,  by  rain  in  the 
shape  of  ice.  The  winter  rain  gets  into  the 
ground,  and  does  by  the  rock  what  it  has 
done  by  the  stones  of  many  an  old  building. 
It  sinks  into  the  porous  stone,  freezes  there, 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  25 

expands  in  freezing,  and  splits  and  peels  the 
stone  with  a  force  which  is  slowly  but  surely 
crumbling  the  whole  of  Northern  Europe  and 
America  to  powder. 

Do  you  doubt  me  ?  I  say  nothing  but 
what  you  can  judge  of  for  yourselves.  The 
next  time  you  go  up  any  mountain,  look  at 
the  loose  broken  stones  with  which  the  top 
is  coated,  just  underneath  the  turf.  What 
has  broken  them  up  but  frost  ?  Look  again, 
as  stronger  proof,  at  the  talus  of  broken 
stones — screes,  as  they  call  them  in  Scotland ; 
rattles,  as  we  call  them  in  Devon — which  lie 
along  the  base  of  many  mountain  cliffs. 
What  has  brought  them  down  but  frost  ?  If 
you  ask  the  country  folk  they  will  tell  you 
whether  I  am  right  or  not.  If  you  go  thither, 
not  in  the  summer,  but  just  after  the  winter's 
frost,  you  will  see  for  yourselves,  by  the 
fresh  frost-crop  of  newly-broken  bits,  that 


26  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


I  am  right.  Possibly  you  may  find  me  to 
be  even  more  right  than  is  desirable,  by 
having  a  few  angular  stones,  from  the  size 
of  your  head  to  that  of  your  body,  hurled  at 
you  by  the  frost-giants  up  above.  If  you  go 
to  the  Alps  at  certain  seasons,  and  hear  the 
thunder  of  the  falling  rocks,  and  see  their 
long  lines — moraines,  as  they  are  called — 
sliding  slowly  down  upon  the  surface  of  the 
glacier,  then  you  will  be  ready  to  believe 
the  geologist  who  tells  you  that  frost,  and 
probably  frost  alone,  has  hewn  out  such  a 
peak  as  the  Matterhorn  from  some  vast  table- 
land ;  and  is  hewing  it  down  still,  winter 
after  winter,  till  some  day,  where  the  snow 
Alps  now  stand,  there  shall  be  rolling  up- 
lands of  rich  cultivable  soil. 

So  much  for  the  mechanical  action  of  rain, 
in  the  shape  of  ice.  Now  a  few  words  on 
its  chemical  action. 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD. 


Rain  water  is  seldom  pure.  It  carries  in  it 
carbonic  acid  ;  and  that  acid,  beating  in 
shower  after  shower  against  the  face  of  a 
cliff—  especially  if  it  be  a  limestone  cliff- 
weathers  the  rock  chemically;  changing  (in 
the  case  of  limestone)  the  insoluble  carbonate 
of  lime  into  a  soluble  bicarbonate,  and  carry- 
ing that  away  in  water,  which,  however  clear, 
is  still  hard.  Hard  water  is  usually  water 
which  has  invisible  lime  in  it;  there  are 
from  ten  to  fifteen  grains  and  more  of  lime 
in  every  gallon  of  limestone  water.  I  leave 
you  to  calculate  the  enormous  weight  of  lime 
which  must  be  so  carried  down  to  the  sea 
every  year  by  a  single  limestone  or  chalk 
brook.  You  can  calculate  it,  if  you  like, 
by  ascertaining  the  weight  of  lime  in  each 
gallon,  and  the  average  quantity  of  water 
which  comes  down  the  stream  in  a  day  ;  and 
when  your  sum  is  done,  you  will  be  astonished 

6* 


28  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

to  find  it  one  not  of  many  pounds,  but  pro- 
bably of  many  tons,  of  solid  lime,  which 
you  never  suspected  or  missed  from  the  hills 
around.  Again,  by  the  time  the  rain  has 
sunk  through  the  soil,  it  is  still  less  pure. 
It  carries  with  it  not  only  carbonic  acid,  but 
acids  produced  by  decaying  vegetables — by 
the  roots  of  the  grasses  and  trees  which  grow 
above;  and  they  dissolve  the  cement  of  the 
rock  by  chemical  action,  especially  if  the 
cement  be  lime  or  iron.  You  may  see  this 
for  yourselves,  again  and  again.  You  may 
see  how  the  root  of  a  tree,  penetrating  the 
earth,  discolours  the  soil  with  which  it  is  in 
contact.  You  may  see  how  the  whole  rock, 
just  below  the  soil,  has  often  changed  in 
colour  from  the  compact  rock  below,  if  the 
soil  be  covered  with  a  dense  layer  of  peat  or 
growing  vegetables. 
But  there  is  another  force  at  work,  and 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  29 

quite  as  powerful  as  rain  and  rivers,  making 
the  soil  of  alluvial  flats.  Perhaps  it  has 
helped,  likewise,  to  make  the  soil  of  all  the 
lowlands  in  these  isles ; — and  that  is,  the 
waves  of  the  sea. 

If  you  ever  go  to  Parkgate,  in  Cheshire,  try 
if  you  cannot  learn  there  a  little  geology. 

Walk  beyond  the  town.  You  find  the 
shore  protected  for  a  long  way  by  a  sea-wall, 
lest  it  should  be  eaten  away  by  the  waves. 
What  the  force  of  those  waves  can  be,  even 
on  that  sheltered  coast,  you  may  judge — at 
least  you  could  have  judged  this  time  last 
year — by  the  masses  of  masonry  torn  from 
their  iron  clampings  during  the  gale  of 
three  winters  since.  Look  steadily  at  those 
rolled  blocks,  those  twisted  stanchions,  if 
they  are  there  still ;  and  then  ask  yourselves 
• — it  will  be  fair  reasoning  from  the  known 
to  the  unknown  —  What  effect  must  such 


30  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

wave-power  as  that  have  had  beating  and 
breaking  for  thousands  of  years  along  the 
western  coasts  of  England,  Scotland,  Ireland  ? 
It  must  have  eaten  up  thousands  of  acres — 
whole  shires,  may  be,  ere  now.  Its  teeth  are 
strong  enough,  and  it  knows  neither  rest  nor 
pity,  the  cruel  hungry  sea.  Give  it  but  time 
enough,  and  what  would  it  not  eat  up  ?  It 
would  eat  up,  in  the  course  of  ages,  all  the 
dry  land  of  this  planet,  were  it  not  baffled  by 
another  counteracting  force,  of  which  I  shall 
speak  hereafter, 

As  you  go  on  beyond  the  sea-wall,  you 
find  what  it  is  eating  up.  The  whole  low 
cliff  is  going  visibly.  But  whither  is  it 
going  ?  To  form  new  soil  in  the  sestuary. 
Now  you  will  not  wonder  how  old  harbours 
so  often  become  silted  up.  The  sea  has 
washed  the  land  into  them.  But  more,  the 
sea-currents  do  not  allow  the  sands  of  the 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD. 


eestuary  to  escape  freely  out  to  sea.  They 
pile  it  up  in  shifting  sand-banks  about  the 
mouth  of  the  sestuary.  The  prevailing  sea- 
winds,  from  whatever  quarter,  catch  up  the 
sand,  and  roll  it  up  into  sand-hills.  Those 
sand-hills  are  again  eaten  down  by  the  sea, 
and  mixed  with  the  mud  of  the  tide-flats, 
and  so  is  formed  a  mingled  soil,  partly  of 
clayey  mud,  partly  of  sand;  such  a  soil  as 
stretches  over  the  greater  part  of  all  our 
lowlands. 

Now,  why  should  not  that  soil,  whether 
in  England  or  in  Scotland,  have  been  made 
by  the  same  means  as  that  of  every  aestuary  ? 

You  find  over  great  tracts  of  East  Scotland, 
Lancashire,  Norfolk,  &c.,  pure  loose  sand 
just  beneath  the  surface,  which  looks  as  if  it 
was  blown  sand  from  a  beach.  Is  it  not 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  it  is  ?  You  find 
rising  out  of  many  lowlands,  crags  which  look 


TOWN     GEOLOGY. 


exactly  like  old  sea-cliffs  eaten  by  the  waves, 
from  the  base  of  which  the  waters  have  gone 
back.  Why  should  not  those  crags  be  old 
sea-cliffs  ?  Why  should  we  not,  following 
our  rule  of  explaining  the  unknown  by  the 
known,  assume  that  such  they  are  till  some 
one  gives  us  a  sound  proof  that  they  are  r.ot  ; 
and  say  —  These  great  plains  of  England  and 
Scotland  were  probably  once  covered  by  a 
shallow  sea,  and  their  soils  made  as  the  soil 
of  any  tide-flat  is  being  made  now  ? 

But  you  may  say,  and  most  reasonably, 
"The  tide-flats  are  just  at  the  sea  level. 
The  whole  of  the  lowland  is  many  feet  above 
the  sea  ;  it  must  therefore  have  been  raised 
out  of  the  sea,  according  to  your  theory: 
and  what  proofs  have  you  of  that  r  " 

Well,  that  is  a  question  both  grand  and 
deep,  on  which  I  shall  not  enter  yet;  but 
meanwhile,  to  satisfy  you  that  I  wish  to  play 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  33 

tair  with  you,  I  ask  you  to  believe  nothing 
but  what  you  can  prove  for  yourselves.  Let 
me  ask  you  this  :  suppose  that  you  had  proof 
positive  that  I  had  fallen  into  the  river  in 
tne  morning;  would  not  your  meeting  me 
in  the  evening  be  also  proof  positive  that 
somehow  or  other  I  had  in  the  course  of 
the  day  got  out  of  the  river?  I  think  you 
will  accept  that  logic  as  sound. 

Now  if  I  can  give  you  proof  positive, 
proof  which  you  can  see  with  your  own  eyes, 
and  handle  with  your  own  hands,  and  alas  ! 
often  feel  but  too  keenly  with  your  own  feet, 
that  the  whole  of  the  lowlands  were  once 
beneath  the  sea ;  then  will  it  not  be  certain 
that,  somehow  or  other,  they  must  have  been 
raised  out  of  the  sea  again  ? 

And  that  I  propose  to  do  in  my  next  paper, 
when  I  speak  of  the  pebbles  in  the  street. 

Meanwhile  I  wish  you  to  face  fairly  the 


34  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

truly  grand  idea,  which  all  I  have  said  tends 
to  prove  true — that  all  the  soil  we  see  is 
made  by  the  destruction  of  older  soils, 
whether  soft  as  clay,  or  hard  as  rock ;  that 
rain,  rivers,  and  seas  are  perpetually  melting" 
and  grinding  up  old  land,  to  compose  new 
land  out  of  it;  and  that  it  must  have  been 
doing  so,  as  long  as  rain,  rivers,  and  seas 
have  existed.  "But  how  did  the  first  land 
of  all  get  made  ? "  I  can  only  reply — A 
natural  question :  but  we  can  only  answer 
that,  by  working  from  the  known  to  the  un- 
known. While  we  are  finding  out  how  these 
later  lands  were  made  and  unmade,  we  may 
stumble  on  some  hints  as  to  how  the  first 
primeval  continents  rose  out  of  the  bosom  of 
the  sea. 

And  thus  I  end  this  paper.  I  trust  it  has 
not  been  intolerably  dull.  But  I  wanted  at 
starting  to  show  my  readers  something  ot  the 


THE    SOIL    OF    THE    FIELD.  35 

right  way  of  finding  out  truth  on  this  and 
perhaps  on  all  subjects ;  to  make  some  simple 
appeals  to  your  common  sense ;  and  to  get 
you  to  accept  some  plain  rules  founded  on 
common  sense,  which  will  be  of  infinite  use 
to  both  you  and  me  in  my  future  papers. 

I  hope,  meanwhile,  that  you  will  agree 
with  me,  that  there  is  plenty  of  geological 
matter  to  be  seen  and  thought  over  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  any  town. 

Be  sure,  that  wherever  there  is  a  river, 
even  a  drain ;  and  a  stone  quarry,  or  even  a 
roadside  bank ;  much  more  where  there  is  a 
sea,  or  a  tidal  aestuary,  there  is  geology 
enough  to  be  learnt,  to  explain  the  greater 
part  of  the  making  of  all  the  continents  on 
the  globe. 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET. 

T  F  you,  dear  reader,  dwell  in  any  northern 
town,  you  will  almost  certainly  see 
paving  courts  and  alleys,  and  sometimes — to 
the  discomfort  of  your  feet — whole  streets,  or 
set  up  as  bournestones  at  corners,  or  laid  in 
heaps  to  be  broken  up  for  road-metal,  certain 
round  pebbles,  usually  dark  brown  or  speckled 
grey,  and  exceedingly  tough  and  hard.  Some 
of  them  will  be  very  large  —  boulders  of 
several  feet  in  diameter.  If  you  move  from 
town  to  town,  from  the  north  of  Scotland  as 
far  down  as  Essex  on  the  east,  or  as  far  down 
as  Shrewsbury  and  Wolverhampton  (at  least) 
on  the  west,  you  will  still  find  these  pebbles, 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET.       37 

but  fewer  and  smaller  as  you  go  south.  It 
matters  not  what  the  rocks  and  soils  of  the 
country  round  may  be.  However  much  they 
may  differ,  these  pebbles  will  be,  on  the 
whole,  the  same  everywhere. 

But  if  your  town  be  south  of  the  valley  of 
the  Thames,  you  will  find,  as  far  as  I  am 
aware,  no  such  pebbles  there.  The  gravels 
round  you  will  be  made  up  entirely  of  rolled 
chalk  flints,  and  bits  of  beds  immediately 
above  or  below  the  chalk.  The  blocks  of 
"  Sarsden  "  sandstone— those  of  which  Stone- 
henge  is  built  —  and  the  "  plum  -  pudding 
stones "  which  are  sometimes  found  with 
them,  have  no  kindred  with  the  northern 
pebbles.  They  belong  to  beds  above  the 
chalk. 

Now  if,  seeing  such  pebbles  about  your 
town,  you  inquire,  like  a  sensible  person  who 
wishes  to  understand  something  of  the  spot 


• 


38  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


on  which  he  lives,  whence  they  come,  you 
will  be  shown  either  a  gravel-pit  or  a  clay- 
pit.  In  the  gravel  the  pebbles_and  boulders 
lie  mixed  with  sand,  as  they  do  in  the  railway 
cutting  just  south  of  Shrewsbury ;  or  in  huge 
mounds  of  fine  sweet  earth,  as  they  do  in  the 
gorge  of  the  Tay  about  Dunkeld,  and  all 
the  way  up  Strathmore,  where  they  form  long 
grassy  mounds  —  tomauns  as  they  call  them 
in  some  parts  of  Scotland  —  askers  as  they 
call  them  in  Ireland.  These  mounds,  with 
their  sweet  fresh  turf  rising  out  of  heather 
and  bog,  were  tenanted — so  Scottish  children 
used  to  believe — by  fairies.  He  that  was 
lucky  might  hear  inside  them  fairy  music, 
and  the  jingling  of  the  fairy  horses'  trappings. 
But  woe  to  him  if  he  fell  asleep  upon  the 
mound,  for  he  would  be  spirited  away  into 
fairyland  for  seven  years,  which  would  seem 
to  him  but  one  day.  A  strange  fancy :  yet 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET.      39 

not  so  strange  as  the  actual  truth  as  to  what 
these  mounds  are,  and  how  they  came  into 
their  places. 

Or  again,  you  might  find  that  your  town's 
pebbles  and  boulders  came  out  of  a  pit  of 
clay,  in  which  they  were  stuck,  without  any 
order  or  bedding,  like  plums  and  raisins  in  a 
pudding.  This  clay  goes  usually  by  the 
name  of  boulder-clay.  You  would  see  such 
near  any  town  in  Cheshire  and  Lancashire ; 
or  along  Leith  shore,  near  Edinburgh ;  or, 
to  give  one  more  instance  out  of  hundreds, 
along  the  coast  at  Scarborough.  If  you  walk 
along  the  shore  southward  of  that  town, 
you  will  see,  in  the  gullies  of  the  cliff,  great 
beds  of  sticky  clay,  stuffed  full  of  bits  of  every 
rock  between  the  Lake  mountains  and  Scar- 
borough, from  rounded  pebbles  of  most 
ancient  rock  down  to  great  angular  fragments 
of  ironstone  and  coal.  There,  as  elsewhere, 


4O  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

the  great  majority  of  the  pebbles  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  rock  on  which  the  clay  happens 
to  lie,  but  have  come,  some  of  them,  from 
places  many  miles  away. 

Now  if  we  find  spread  over  a  low  land 
pebbles  composed  of  rocks  which  are  only 
found  in  certain  high  lands,  is  it  not  an  act 
of  mere  common  sense  to  say — These  pebbles 
have  come  from  the  highlands  ?  And  if  the 
pebbles  are  rounded,  while  the  rocks  like 
them  in  the  highlands  always  break  off  in 
angular  shapes,  is  it  not,  again,  an  act  of 
mere  common  sense  to  say  —  These  pebbles 
were  once  angular,  and  have  been  rubbed 
round,  either  in  getting  hither  or  before  they 
started  hither  ? 

Does  all  this  seem  to  you  mere  truism, 
my  dear  reader?  If  so,  I  am  sincerely  glad 
to  hear  it.  It  was  not  so  very  long  ago  that 
such  arguments  would  have  been  considered, 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET.      4! 

not  only  no  truisms,  but  not  even  common 
sense. 

But  to  return,  let  us  take,  as  an  example, 
a  sample  of  these  boulder  clay  pebbles  from 
the  neighbourhood  of  Liverpool  and  Birken- 
head,  made  by  Mr.  De  Ranee,  the  government 
geological  surveyor : — 

Granite,  greenstone,  felspar  porphyry,  fel- 
stone,  quartz  rock  (all  igneous  rocks,  that  is, 
either  formed  by,  or  altered  by  volcanic  heat, 
and  almost  all  found  in  the  Lake  mountains), 
37  per  cent. 

Silurian  grits  (  he  common  stones  of  tne 
Lake  mountains  deposited  by  water),  43  per 
cent. 

Ironstone,  i  per  cent. 

Carboniferous  limestone,  5  per  cent. 

Permian  or  Triassic  sandstones,  i.e.  rocks 
immediately  round  Liverpool,  1 2  per  cent. 

Now,  does  not  this  sample  show,  as  far  as 


42  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

human  common  sense  can  be  depended  on, 
that  the  great  majority  of  these  stones  come 
from  the  Lake  mountains,  sixty  or  seventy 
miles  north  of  Liverpool  ?  I  think  your 
common  sense  will  tell  you  that  these  pebbles 
are  not  mere  concretions ;  that  is,  formed 
out  of  the  substance  of  the  clay  after  it  was 
deposited.  The  least  knowledge  of  mine- 
ralogy would  prove  that.  But,  even  if  you 
are  no  mineralogist,  common  sense  will  tell 
you  that  if  they  were  all  concreted  out  of  the 
same  clay,  it  is  most  likely  that  they  would 
be  all  of  the  same  kind,  and  not  of  a  dozen 
or  more  different  kinds.  Common  sense  will 
tell-  you,  also,  that  if  they  were  all  concreted 
out  of  the  same  clay,  it  is  a  most  extraordinary 
coincidence,  indeed  one  too  strange  to  be 
believed,  if  any  less  strange  explanation  can 
be  found — that  they  should  have  taken  the 
composition  of  different  rocks  which  are  found 


THE     PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  43 

all  together  in  one  group  of  mountains  to  the 
northward.  You  will  surely  say — If  this  be 
granite,  it  has  most  probably  come  from  a 
granite  mountain ;  if  this  be  grit,  from  a 
gritstone  mountain,  and  so  on  with  the 
whole  list.  Why  are  we  to  go  out  of  our 
way  to  seek  improbable  explanations,  when 
there  is  a  probable  one  staring  us  in  the 
face  ? 

Next — and  this  is  well  worth  your  notice 
— if  you  will  examine  the  pebbles  carefully, 
especially  the  larger  ones,  you  will  find  that 
they  are  not  only  more  or  less  rounded,  but 
often  scratched ;  and  often,  too,  in  more  than 
one  direction,  two  or  even  three  sets  of 
scratches  crossing  each  other ;  marked,  as  a 
cat  marks  an  elder  stem  when  she  sharpens 
her  claws  upon  it ;  and  that  these  scratches 
have  not  been  made  by  the  quarrymen's 
tools,  but  are  old  marks  which  exist — as  you 

7*  5 


44  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

may  easily  prove  for  yourself — while  the  stone 
is  still  lying  in  its  bed  of  clay.  Would  it. 
not  be  an  act  of  mere  common  sense  to  say — 
These  scratches  have  been  made  by  the  sharp 
points  of  other  stones  which  have  rubbed 
against  the  pebbles  somewhere,  and  some 
when,  with  great  force  ? 

So  far  so  good.  The  next  question  is — 
How  did  these  stones  get  into  the  clay?  If 
we  can  discover  that,  we  may  also  discover 
how  they  were  rounded  and  scratched.  We 
must  find  a  theory  which  will  answer  our 
question ;  and  one  which,  as  Professor  Huxley 
would  say,  "  will  go  on  all  fours,"  that  is, 
will  explain  all  the  facts  of  the  case,  and  not 
only  a  few  of  them. 

What,  then,  brought  the  stones  ? 

We  cannot,  I  think,  answer  that  question, 
as  some  have  tried  to  answer  it,  by  saying 
that  they  were  brought  by  Noah's  flood.  For 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  45 

it  is  clear,  that  very  violent  currents  of  water 
would  be  needed  to  carry  boulders,  some  of 
them  weighing  many  tons,  for  many  miles. 
Now  Scripture  says  nothing  of  any  such 
violent  currents ;  and  we  have  no  right  to 
put  currents,  or  any  other  imagined  facts,  into 
Scripture  out  of  our  own  heads,  and  then 
argue  from  them  as  if  not  we,  but  the  text  of 
Scripture,  had  asserted  their  existence. 

But  still,  they  may  have  been  rolled  hither 
by  water.  That  theory  certainly  would  ex- 
plain their  being  rounded ;  though  not  their 
being  scratched.  But  it  will  not  explain  their 
being  found  in  the  clay. 

Recollect  what  I  said  in  my  first  paper: 
that  water  drops  its  pebbles  and  coarser 
particles  first,  while  it  carries  the  fine  clayey 
mud  onward  in  solution,  and  only  drops  it 
when  the  water  becomes  still.  Now  currents 
of  such  tremendous  violence  as  to  carry  these 


46  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

boulder  stones  onward,  would  have  carried 
the  mud  for  many  miles  farther  still ;  and  we 
should  find  the  boulders,  not  in  clay,  but 
lying  loose  together,  probably  on  a  hard  rock 
bottom,  scoured  clean  by  the  current.  .That 
is  what  we  find  in  the  beds  of  streams ;  that 
is  just  what  we  do  not  find  in  this  case. 

But  the  boulders  may  have  been  brought 
by  a  current,  and  then  the  water  may  have 
become  still,  and  the  clay  settled  quietly 
round  them.  What  ?  Under  them  as  well 
as  over  them  ?  On  that  theory  also  we 
should  find  them  only  at  the  bottom  of  the 
clay.  As  it  is,  we  find  them  scattered  any- 
where and  everywhere  through  it,  from  top 
to  bottom.  So  that  theory  will  not  do.  In- 
deed, no  theory  will  do  which  supposes  them 
to  have  been  brought  by  water  alone. 

Try  yourself,  dear  reader,  and  make  experi- 
ments, with  running  water,  pebbles,  arid  mud. 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  47 

If  you  try  for  seven  years,  I  believe,  you  will 
never  contrive  to  make  your  pebbles  lie  about 
in  your  mud,  as  they  lie  about  in  every  pit  in 
the  boulder  clay. 

Well  then,  there  we  are  at  fault,  it  seems. 
We  have  no  explanation  drawn  from  known 
facts  which  will  do — unless  we  are  to  suppose, 
which  I  don't  think  you  will  do,  that  stones, 
clay,  and  all  were  blown  hither  along  the 
surface  of  the  ground,  by  primeval  hurricanes, 
ten  times  worse  than  those  of  the  West 
Indies,  which  certainly  will  roll  a  cannon  a 
few  yards,  but  cannot,  surely,  roll  a  boulder 
stone  a  hundred  miles 

Now,  suppose  that  there  was  a  force,  an 
agent,  known — luckily  for  you,  not  to  you — 
but  known  but  too  well  to  sailors  and  tra- 
vellers ;  a  force  which  is  at  work  over  the 
vast  sheets  of  land  at  both  the  north  and 
south  poles ;  at  work,  too,  on  every  high 


48  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

mountain  range  in  the  world,  and  therefore 
a  very  common  natural  force;  and  suppose 
that  this  foice  would  explain  all  the  facts, 
namely — 

How  the  stones  got  here  ; 

How  they  were  scratched  and  rounded ; 

How  they  were  imbedded  in  clay ; 
because  it  is  notoriously,  and  before  men's 
eyes  now,  carrying  great  stones  hundreds  of 
miles,  and  scratching  and  rounding  them 
also ;  carrying  vast  deposits  of  mud,  too,  and 
mixing  up  mud  and  stones  just  as  we  see 
them  in  the  brick  pits, — Would  not  our  com- 
mon sense  have  a  right  to  try  that  explana- 
tion ? — to  suspect  that  this  force,  which  we 
do  not  see  at  work  in  Britain  now,  may 
have  been  at  work  here  ages  since  ?  That 
would  at  least  be  reasoning  from  the  known 
to  the  unknown.  What  state  of  things,  then, 
do  we  find  among  the  highest  mountains; 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  49 

and  over  whole  countries  which,  though  not 
lofty,  lie  far  enough  north  or  south  to  be 
permanently  covered  with  ice  ? 

We  find,  first,  an  ice-cap  or  ice-sheet,  fed 
by  the  winter's  snows,  stretching  over  the 
higher  land,  and  crawling  downward  and 
outward  by  its  own  weight,  along  the  valleys, 
as  glaciers. 

We  find  underneath  the  glaciers,  first  a 
moraine  pro/ande,  consisting  of  the  boulders 
and  gravel,  and  earth,  which  the  glacier  has 
ground  off  the  hillsides,  and  is  carrying  down 
with  it. 

These  stones,  of  course,  grind,  scratch,  and 
polish  each  other;  and  in  like  wise  grind, 
scratch,  and  polish  the  rock  over  which  they 
pass,  under  the  enormous  weight  of  the  super- 
incumbent ice. 

We  find  also,  issuing  from  under  each  gla- 
cier a  stream,  carrying  the  finest  mud,  the 


50  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

result  of  the  grinding  of  the  boulders  against 
each  other  and  the  glacier. 

We  find,  moreover,  on  the  surface  of  the 
glaciers,  moraines  superieures — long  lines  of 
stones  and  dirt  which  have  fallen  from  neigh- 
bouring cliffs,  and  are  now  travelling  down- 
ward with  the  glaciers. 

Their  fate,  if  the  glacier  ends  on  land,  is 
what  was  to  be  expected.  The  stones  from 
above  the  glacier  fall  over  the  ice-cliff  at  its 
end,  to  mingle  with  those  thrown  out  from 
underneath  the  glacier,  and  form  huge  banks 
of  boulders,  called  terminal  moraines,  while 
the  mud  runs  off,  as  all  who  have  seen  glaciers 
know,  in  a  turbid  torrent. 

Their  fate,  again,  is  what  was  to  be  ex- 
pected if  the  glacier  ends,  as  it  commonly 
does  in  Arctic  regions,  in  the  sea.  The  ice 
grows  out  to  sea-ward  for  more  than  a  mile 
sometimes,  about  one-eighth  of  it  being  above 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET.      51 

water,  and  seven-eighths  below,  so  that  an 
ire-cliff  one  hundred  feet  high  may  project 
into  water  eight  hundred  feet  deep.  At  last, 
when  it  gets  out  of  its  depth,  the  buoyancy  of 
the  water  breaks  it  off  in  icebergs,  which  float 
away,  at  the  mercy  of  tides  and  currents, 
often  grounding  again  in  shallower  water,  and 
ploughing  the  sea-bottom  as  they  drag  along 
it.  These  bergs  carry  stones  and  dirt,  often 
in  large  quantities  ;  so  that,  whenever  a  berg 
melts  or  capsizes,  it  strews  its  burden  con- 
fusedly about  the  sea-floor. 

Meanwhile  the  fine  mud  which  is  flowing 
out  from  under  the  ice  goes  out  to  sea  like- 
wise, colouring  the  water  far  out,  and  then 
subsiding  as  a  soft  tenacious  ooze,  in  which 
the  stones  brought  out  by  the  ice  are  im- 
bedded. And  this  ooze — so  those  who  have 
examined  it  assert — cannot  be  distinguished 
from  the  brick-clay,  or  fossiliferous  boulder- 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


clay,  so  common  in  the  North.  A  very  illus- 
trious Scandinavian  explorer,  visiting  Edin- 
burgh, declared,  as  soon  as  he  saw  the  sections 
of  boulder-clay  exhibited  near  that  city,  that 
this  was  the  very  substance  which  he  saw 
forming  in  the  Spitzbergen  ice-fiords.* 

I  have  put  these  facts  as  simply  and  baldly 
as  I  can,  in  order  that  the  reader  may  look 
steadily  at  them,  without  having  his  attention 
drawn  off,  or  his  fancy  excited,  by  their  real 
poetry  and  grandeur.  Indeed,  it  would  have 
been  an  impertinence  to  have  done  otherwise  ; 
for  I  have  never  seen  a  live  glacier,  by  land 
or  sea,  though  I  have  seen  many  a  dead  one. 
And  the  public  has  had  the  opportunity, 

*  See  a  most  charming  paper  on  "  The  Physics  of  Arctic 
Tee,"  by  Dr.  Robert  Brown  of  Campster,  published  in  the 
Quarterly  Journal  of  the  Geological  Society,  June,  1870.  This 
article  is  so  remarkable,  not  only  for  its  sound  scientific  matter, 
but  for  the  vividness  and  poetic  beauty  of  its  descriptions,  that  I 
must  express  a  hope  that  the  learned  author  will  some  da) 
enlarge  it,  and  publish  it  in  a  separate  form. 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  53 

lately,  of  reading  so  many  delightful  books 
about  "peaks,  passes,  and  glaciers,"  that  I 
am  bound  to  suppose  that  many  of  my  readers 
know  as  much,  or  more,  about  them  than  I  do. 

But  let  us  go  a  step  further;  and,  bearing 
in  our  minds  what  live  glaciers  are  like,  let 
us  imagine  what  a  dead  glacier  would  be 
like ;  a  glacier,  that  is,  which  had  melted, 
and  left  nothing  but  its  skeleton  of  stones  and 
dirt. 

We  should  find  the  faces  of  the  rock  scored 
and  polished,  generally  in  lines  pointing  down 
the  valleys,  or  at  least  outward  from  the 
centre  of  the  highlands,  and  polished  and 
scored  most  in  their  upland,  or  weather  sides. 
We  should  find  blocks  of  rock  left  behind, 
and  perched  about  on  other  rocks  of  a  diffe- 
rent kind.  We  should  find  in  the  valleys  the 
old  moraines  left  as  vast  deposits  of  boulder 
and  shingle,  which  would  be  in  time  sawn 


54  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

through  and  sorted  over  by  the  rivers.  And 
if  the  sea-bottom  outside  were  upheaved,  and 
became  dry  land,  we  should  find  on  it  the 
remains  of  the  mud  from  under  the  glacier, 
stuck  full  of  stones  and  boulders,  iceberg- 
dropped.  This  mud  would  be  often  very 
irregularly  bedded ;  for  it  would  have  been 
disturbed  by  the  ploughing  of  the  icebergs, 
and  mixed  here  and  there  with  dirt  which 
had  fallen  from  them.  Moreover,  as  the  sea 
became  shallower  and  the  mud -beds  got 
awash  one  after  the  other,  they  would  be 
torn  about,  resifted,  and  reshaped  by  currents 
and  by  tides,  and  mixed  with  shore-sand 
ground  out  of  shingle  -  beach,  thus  making 
confusion  worse  confounded.  A  few  shells, 
of  an  Arctic  or  northern  type,  would  be  found 
in  it  here  and  there.  Some  would  have  lived 
near  those  later  beaches,  some  in  deeper 
water  in  the  ancient  ooze,  wherever  the  ice- 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  55 

berg  had  left  it  in  peace  long  enough  for 
sea-animals  to  colonise  and  breed  in  it.  But 
the  general  appearance  of  the  dried  sea- 
bottom  would  be  a  dreary  and  lifeless  waste 
of  sands,  gravels,  loose  boulders,  and  boulder- 
bearing  clays ;  and  wherever  a  boss  of  bare 
rock  still  stood  up,  it  would  be  found  ground 
down,  and  probably  polished  and  scored  by 
the  ponderous  icebergs  which  had  lumbered 
over  it  in  their  passage  out  to  sea. 

In  a  word,  it  would  look  exactly  as  vast 
tracts  of  the  English,  Scotch,  and  Irish  low- 
lands must  have  looked  before  returning 
vegetation  coated  their  dreary  sands  and 
clays  with  a  layer  of  brown  vegetable  soil. 

Thus,  and  I  believe  thus  only,  can  we  ex- 
plain the  facts  connected  with  these  boulder- 
pebbles.  No  agent  known  on  earth  can  have 
stuck  them  in  the  clay,  save  ice,  which  is 
known  to  do  so  still  elsewhere. 


5<»  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

No  known  agent  can  have  scratched  them 
as  they  are  scratched,  save  ice,  which  is 
known  to  do  so  still  elsewhere. 

No  known  agent  —  certainly  not,  in  my 
opinion,  the  existing  rivers — can  have  accu- 
mulated the  vast  beds  of  boulders  which 
lie  along  the  course  of  certain  northern 
rivers ;  notably  along  the  Dee  about  Aboyne 
— save  ice,  bearing  them  slowly  down  from 
the  distant  summits  of  the  Grampians. 

No  known  agent,  save  ice,  can  have  pro- 
duced those  rounded,  and  polished,  and 
scored,  and  fluted  rockers  moutonnes — "  sheep- 
backed  rocks  " — so  common  in  the  Lake  dis- 
trict ;  so  common,  too,  in  Snowdon,  especially 
between  the  two  lakes  of  Llanberis;  common 
in  Kerry;  to  be  seen  anywhere,  as  far  as  I 
have  ascertained,  around  the  Scotch  High- 
lands, where  the  turf  is  cleared  away  from  an 
unweathered  surface  of  rock,  in  the  direction 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET.      57 

in  which  a  glacier  would  have  pressed  against 
it  had  one  been  there.  Where  these  polish- 
ing's  and  scorings  are  found  in  narrow  glens, 
it  is,  no  doubt,  an  open  question  whether 
some  of  them  may  not  be  the  work  of  water. 
But  nothing  but  the  action  of  ice  can  have 
produced  what  I  have  seen  in  land-locked 
and  quiet  fiords  in  Kerry  —  ice-flutings  in 
polished  rocks  below  high-water  mark,  so 
large  that  I  could  lie  down  in  one  of  them- 
Nothing  but  the  action  of  ice  could  produce 
what  may  be  seen  in  any  of  our  mountains 
— whole  sheets  of  rock  ground  down  into 
rounded  flats,  irrespective  of  the  lie  of  the 
beds,  not  in  valleys,  but  on  the  brows  and 
summits  of  mountains,  often  ending  abruptly 
at  the  edge  of  some  sudden  cliff,  where  the 
true  work  of  water,  in  the  shape  of  rain  and 
frost,  is  actually  destroying  the  previous  work 
of  ice,  and  fulfilling  the  rule  laid  down  (I 


58  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

think  by  Professor  Geikie  in  his  delightful 
book  on  Scotch  scenery  as  influenced  by  its 
geology),  that  ice  planes  down  into  flats, 
while  water  saws  out  into  crags  and  gullies ; 
and  that  the  rain  and  frost  are  even  now 
restoring  Scotch  scenery  to  something  of  that 
ruggedness  and  picturesqueness  which  it  must 
have  lost  when  it  lay,  like  Greenland,  under 
the  indiscrirainating  grinding  of  a  heavy 
sheet  of  ice. 

Lastly ;  no  known  agent,  save  ice,  will 
explain  those  perched  boulders,  composed  of 
ancient  hard  rocks,  which  may  be  seen  in  so 
many  parts  of  these  islands  and  of  the  Con- 
tinent. No  water-power  could  have  lifted 
those  stones,  and  tossed  them  up  high  and 
dry  on  mountain  ridges  and  promontories, 
upon  rocks  of  a  totally  different  kind.  Some 
of  my  readers  surely  recollect  Wordsworth's 
noble  lines  about  these  mysterious  wanderers, 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  59 

of  which  he  had  seen  many  a  one  about  his 
native  hills : — 

"Asa  huge  stone  is  sometimes  seen  to  lie 
Couched  on  the  bald  top  cf  an  eminence, 
Wonder  to  all  who  do  the  same  espy 
By  what  means  it  could  thither  come,  and  whence ; 
So  that  it  seems  a  thing  endued  with  sense  : 
Like  a  sea-beast  crawled  forth,  that  on  a  shelf 
Of  rock  or  sand  reposeth,  there  to  sun  itself." 

Yes ;  but  the  next  time  you  see  such  a  stone, 
believe  that  the  wonder  has  been  solved,  and 
found  to  be,  like  most  wonders  in  Nature, 
more  wonderful  than  we  guessed  it  to  be. 
It  is  not  a  sea-beast  which  has  crawled  forth, 
but  an  ice-beast  which  has  been  left  behind ; 
lifted  up  thither  by  the  ice,  as  surely  as  the 
famous  Pierre-a-bot,  forty  feet  in  diameter, 
and  hundreds  of  boulders  more,  almost  as 
large  as  cottages,  have  been  carried  by  ice 
from  the  distant  Alps  right  across  the  lake  of 

8* 


60  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


Neufchatel,  and  stranded  on  the  slopes  of  the 
Jura,  nine  hundred  feet  above  the  lake.* 

Thus,  I  think,  we  have  accounted  for  facts 
enough  to  make  it  probable  that  Britain  was 
once  covered  partly  by  an  ice-sheet,  as  Green- 
land is  now,  and  partly,  perhaps,  by  an  icy 
sea.  But,  to  make  assurance  more  sure,  let 
us  look  for  new  facts,  and  try  whether  our 
ice-dream  will  account  for  them  also.  Let 
us  investigate  our  case  as  a  good  medical 
man  does,  by  "verifying  his  first  induction." 

He  says — At  the  first  glance,  I  can  see 
symptoms  #,  d,  c.  It  is  therefore  probable  that 
my  patient  has  got  complaint  A.  But  if  he 
has  he  ought  to  have  symptom  d  also.  If  I 
find  that,  my  guess  will  be  yet  more  probable. 
He  ought  also  to  have  symptom  ^,  and  so 
forth ;  and  as  I  find  successively  each  of  these 
symptoms  which  are  proper  to  A,  my  first 

•  See  Lyell,   « Antiquity  of  Man,"  p.  294,  et  seqq. 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  6l 

guess  will  become  more  and  more  probable, 
till  it  reaches  practical  certainty. 

Now  let  us  do  the  same,  and  say — If  this 
strange  dream  be  true,  and  the  lowlands  of 
the  North  were  once  under  an  icy  sea,  ought 
we  not  to  find  sea-shells  in  their  sands  and 
clays  ?  Not  abundantly,  of  course.  We  can 
understand  that  the  sea-animals  would  be  too 
rapidly  covered  up  in  mud,  and  too  much 
disturbed  by  icebergs  and  boulders,  to  be 
very  abundant.  But  still,  some  should  surely 
be  found  here  and  there. 

Doubtless  ;  and  if  my  northern-town  readers 
will  search  the  boulder-clay  pits  near  them, 
they  will  most  probably  find  a  few  shells, 
if  not  in  the  clay  itself,  yet  in  sand-beds 
mixed  with  them,  and  probably  underlying 
them.  And  this  is  a  notable  fact,  that  the 
more  species  of  shells  they  find,  the  more 
they  will  find — if  they  work  out  their  names 


62  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

from  any  good  book  of  conchology — of  a 
northern  type ;  of  shells  which  notoriously, 
at  this  day,  inhabit  the  colder  seas. 

It  is  impossible  for  me  here  to  enter  at 
length  on  a  subject  on  which  a  whole  litera- 
ture has  been  already  written.  Those  who 
wish  to  study  it  may  find  all  that  they  need 
know,  and  more,  in  Lyell's  "Student's  Ele- 
ments of  Geology,"  and  in  chapter  xii.  of  his 
"  Antiquity  of  Man."  They  will  find  that  if 
the  evidence  of  scientific  conchologists  be 
worth  anything,  the  period  can  be  pointed 
out,  in  the  strata,  though  not  of  course  in 
time,  at  which  these  seas  began  to  grow 
colder,  and  southern  and  Mediterranean  shells 
to  disappear,  their  places  being  taken  by 
shells  of  a  temperate,  and  at  last  of  an  Arctic 
climate  ;  which  last  have  since  retreated 
either  toward  their  native  North,  or  into  cold 
water  at  great  depths.  From  Essex  across  to 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET.      63 

Wales,  from  Wales  to  the  sestuary  of  the 
Clyde,  this  fact  has  been  verified  again  and 
again.  And  in  the  search  for  these  shells,  a 
fresh  fact,  and  a  most  startling  one,  was 
discovered.  They  are  to  be  found  not  only  in 
the  clay  of  the  lowlands,  but  at  considerable 
heights  up  the  hills,  showing  that,  at  some 
time  or  other,  these  hills  have  been  sub- 
merged beneath  the  sea. 

Let  me  give  one  example,  which  any 
tourist  into  Wales  may  see  for  himself.  Moel 
Tryfaen  is  a  mountain  over  Carnarvon.  Now 
perched  on  the  side  of  that  mountain,  fourteen 
hundred  feet  above  the  present  sea-level,  is 
an  ancient  sea-beach,  five-and-thirty  feet 
thick,  lying  on  great  ice-scratched  boulders, 
which  again  lie  on  the  mountain  slates.  It 
was  discovered  by  the  late  Mr.  Trimmer, 
now,  alas  !  lost  to  Geology,  Out  of  that 
beach  fifty-seven  different  species  of  shells 


64  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


have  been  taken ;  eleven  of  them  are  now 
exclusively  Arctic,  and  not  found  in  our  seas ; 
four  of  them  are  still  common  to  the  Arctic 
seas  and  to  our  own  ;  and  almost  all  the  rest 
are  northern  shells. 

Fourteen  hundred  feet  above  the  present 
sea  :  and  that,  it  must  be  understood,  is  not 
the  greatest  height  at  which  such  shells  may 
be  found  hereafter.  For,  according  to  Pro- 
fessor Ramsay,  drift  of  the  same  kind  as  that 
on  Moel  Tryfaen  is  found  at  a  height  of  two 
thousand  three  hundred  feet. 

Now  I  ask  my  readers  to  use  their  common 
sense  over  this  astounding  fact — which,  after 
all,  is  only  one  among  hundreds ;  to  let  (as 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  would  well  say)  their 
"  thought  play  freely  "  about  it ;  and  consider 
for  themselves  what  those  shells  must  mean. 
I  say  not  may,  but  must,  unless  we  are  to 
believe  in  a  "Deus  quidam  deceptor,"  in  a 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  6$ 

God  who  puts  shells  upon  mountain -sides 
only  to  befool  honest  human  beings,  and 
gives  men  intellects  which  are  worthless  for 
even  the  simplest  work.  Those  shells  must 
mean  that  that  mountain,  and  therefore  the 
mountains  round  it,  must  have  been  once 
fourteen  hundred  feet  at  least  lower  than  they 
are  now.  That  the  sea  in  which  they  were 
sunk  was  far  colder  than  now.  That  icebergs 
brought  and  dropped  boulders  round  their 
flanks.  That  upon  those  boulders  a  sea- 
beach  formed,  and  that  dead  shells  were 
beaten  into  it  from  a  sea-bottom  close  by. 
That,  and  no  less,  Moel  Tryfaen  must  mean. 

But  it  must  mean,  also,  a  length  of  time 
which  has  been  well  called  "appalling."  A 
length  of  time  sufficient  to  let  the  mountain 
sink  into  the  sea.  Then  length  of  time 
enough  to  enable  those  Arctic  shells  to  crawl 
down  from  the  northward,  settle,  and  propa- 


66  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


gate  themselves  generation  after  generation  ; 
then  length  ot  time  enough  to  uplift  their 
dead  remains,  and  the  beach,  and  the  boulders, 
and  all  Snowdonia,  fourteen  hundred  feet  into 
the  air.  And  it  any  one  should  object  that 
the  last  upheaval  may  have  been  effected 

• 

suddenly  by  a  few  tremendous  earthquakes, 
we  must  answer — We  have  no  proof  of  it. 
Earthquakes  upheave  lands  now  only  by 
slight  and  intermittent  upward  pulses  ;  nay, 
some  lands  we  know  to  rise  without  any 
earthquake  pulses,  but  by  simple,  slow, 
upward  swelling  of  a  few  teet  in  a  century ; 
and  we  have  no  reason,  and  therefore  no 
right,  to  suppose  that  Snowdonia  was  up- 
heaved by  any  means  or  at  any  rate  which  we 
do  not  witness  now;  and  therefore  we  are 
bound  to  allow,  not  only  that  there  was  a  past 
"age  of  ice,"  but  that  that  age  was  one  of 
altogether  enormous  duration. 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  6j 

But  meanwhile  some  of  you,  I  presume,  will 
be  ready  to  cry — Stop.  It  may  be  our  own 
weakness ;  but  you  are  really  going  on  too 
fast  and  too  far  for  our  small  imaginations. 
Have  you  not  played  with  us,  as  well  as 
argued  with  us,  till  you  have  inveigled  us  step 
by  step  into  a  conclusion  which  we  cannot 
and  will  not  believe  ?  That  all  this  land 
should  have  been  sunk  beneath  an  icy  sea? 
That  Britain  should  have  been  as  Greenland 
is  now  ?  We  can't  believe  it,  and  we  won't. 

If  you  say  so,  like  stout  common-sense 
Britons,  who  have  a  wholesome  dread  of 
being  taken  in,  with  fine  words  and  wild 
speculations,  I  assure  you  I  shall  not  laugh  at 
you,  even  in  private.  On  the  contrary,  I  shall 
say — what  I  am  sure  every  scientific  man  will 
say — So  much  the  better.  That  is  the  sort  of 
audience  which  we  want,  if  we  are  teaching 

natural    science.      We    do    not   want    haste, 
6 


68  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

enthusiasm,  gole-moucherie,  as  the  French  call 
it,  which  is  agape  to  snap  up  any  new  and 
vast  fancy,  just  because  it  is  new  and  vast. 
We  want  our  readers  to  be  slow,  suspicious, 
conservative,  ready  to  "  gib,"  as  we  say  of  a 
horse,  and  refuse  the  collar  up  a  steep  place, 
saying — I  must  stop  and  think.  I  don't  like 
the  look  of  the  path  ahead  of  me.  It  seems 
an  ugly  place  to  get  up.  I  don't  know  this 
road,  and  I  shall  not  hurry  over  it.  I  must  go 
back  a  few  steps,  and  make  sure.  I  must  see 
whether  it  is  the  right  road ;  whether  there 
are  not  other  roads,  a  dozen  of  them  perhaps, 
which  would  do  as  well  or  better  than  this. 

That  is  the  temper  which  finds  out  truth, 
slowly,  but  once  and  for  all ;  and  I  shall  be 
glad,  not  sorry,  to  see  it  in  my  readers. 

And  I  am  bound  to  say  that  it  has  been  by 
that  temper  that  this  theory  has  been  worked 
out,  and  the  existence  of  this  past  age  of  ice, 


THE     PEBBLES     IN     THE     STREET.  69 

or  glacial  epoch,  has  been  discovered,  through 
many  mistakes,  many  corrections,  and  many 
changes  of  opinion  about  details,  for  nearly 
forty  years  of  hard  work,  by  many  men,  in 
many  lands. 

As  a  very  humble  student  of  this  subject, 
I  may  say  that  I  have  been  looking  these 
facts  in  the  face  earnestly  enough  for  more 
than  twenty  years,  and  that  I  am  about  as 
certain  that  they  can  only  be  explained  by  ice, 
as  I  am  that  my  having  got  home  by  rail  can 
only  be  explained  by  steam. 

But  I  think  I  know  what  startles  you.  It  is 
the  being  asked  to  believe  in  such  an  enor- 
mous change  in  climate,  and  in  the  height  of 
the  land  above  the  sea.  Well — it  is  very 
astonishing,  appalling — all  but  incredible,  if 
we  had  not  the  facts  to  prove  it.  But  of  the 
facts  there  can  be  no  doubt.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  climate  of  this  northern 


/O  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

hemisphere  has  changed  enormously  more 
than  once.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
distribution  of  land  and  water,  the  shape  and 
size  of  its  continents  and  seas,  have  changed 
again  and  again.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that,  for  instance,  long  before  the  age  of  ice, 
the  whole  North  of  Europe  was  much  warmer 
than  it  is  now. 

Take  Greenland,  for  instance.  Disco  Island 
lies  in  Baffin's  Bay,  off  the  west  coast  of 
Greenland,  in  latitude  70°,  far  within  the 
Arctic  circle.  Now  there  certain  strata  of 
rock,  older  than  the  ice,  have  not  been 
destroyed  by  the  grinding  of  the  ice-cap  ;  and 
they  are  full  of  fossil  plants.  But  of  what 
kind  of  plants  ?  Of  the  same  families  as  now 
grow  in  the  warmer  parts  of  the  United 
States.  Even  a  tulip-tree  has  been  found 
among  them.  Now  how  is  this  to  be  ex- 
plained ? 


THE  PEBBLES  IN  THE  STREET.      Jl 

Either  we  must  say  that  the  climate  of 
Greenland  was  then  so  much  warmer  than 
now,  that  it  had  summers  probably  as  hot  as 
those  of  New  York ;  or  we  must  say  that  these 
leaves  and  stems  were  floated  thither  from  the 
United  States.  But  if  we  say  the  latter,  we 
must  allow  a  change  in  the  shape  of  the  land 
which  is  enormous.  For  nothing  now  can 
float  northward  from  the  United  States  into 
Baffin's  Bay.  The  polar  current  sets  out  of 
Baffin's  Bay  southward,  bringing  icebergs 
down,  not  leaves  up,  through  Davis's  Straits. 
And  in  any  case  we  must  allow  that  the  hills 
of  Disco  Island  were  then  the  bottom  of  a 
sea :  or  how  would  the  leaves  have  been 
deposited  in  them  at  all  ? 

So  much  for  the  change  of  climate  and 
land  which  can  be  proved  to  have  gone  on 
in  Greenland.  It  has  become  colder.  Why 
should  it  not  some  day  become  warmer  again  ? 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


Now  for  England.  It  can  be  proved,  as 
far  as  common  sense  can  prove  anything, 
that  England  was,  before  the  age  of  ice, 
much  warmer  than  it  is  now,  and  grew  gra- 
dually cooler  and  cooler,  just  as,  while  the 
age  of  ice  was  dying-  out,  it  grew  warmer 
again. 

Now  what  proof  is  there  of  that  ? 

This.  Underneath  London  —  as,  I  dare 
say,  many  of  you  know  —  there  lies  four  or 
five  hundred  feet  of  clay.  But  not  ice-clay. 
Anything  but  that,  as  you.  will  see.  It 
belongs  to  a  formation  late  (geologically 
speaking),  but  somewhat  older  than  those 
Disco  Island  beds. 

And  what  sort  of  fossils  do  we  find  in  it  ? 

In  the  first  place,  the  shells,  which  are 
abundant,  are  tropical  —  Nautili,  Cones,  and 
such  like.  And  more,  fruits  and  seeds  are 
found  in  it,  especially  at  the  Isle  of  Sheppey. 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  73 

And  what  are  they  ?  Fruits  of  Nipa  palms, 
a  form  only  found  now  at  river-mouths  in 
Eastern  India  and  the  Indian  islands ; 
Anona-seeds  ;  gourd-seeds ;  Acacia  fruits — 
all  tropical  again ;  and  Proteaceous  plants 
too — of  an  Australian  type.  Surely  your 
common  sense  would  hint  to  you,  that  this 
London  clay  must  be  mud  laid  down  off  the 
mouth  of  a  tropical  river.  But  your  common 
sense  would  be  all  but  certain  of  that,  when 
you  found,  as  you  would  find,  the  teeth  and 
bones  of  crocodiles  and  turtles,  who  come  to 
land,  remember,  to  lay  their  eggs  ;  the  bones, 
too,  of  large  mammals,  allied  to  the  tapir  of 
India  and  South  America,  and  the  water-hog 
of  the  Cape.  If  all  this  does  not  mean  that 
there  was  once  a  tropic  climate  and  a  tropic 
river  running  into  some  sea  or  other  where 
London  now  stands,  I  must  give  up  common 
sense  and  reason  as  deceitful  and  useless 


74  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

faculties ;  and  believe  nothing,  not  even  the 
evidence  of  my  own  senses. 

And  now,  have  I,  or  have  I  not,  fulfilled 
the  promise  which  I  made — rashly,  I  dare 
say  some  of  you  thought — in  my  first  paper  ? 
Have  I,  or  have  I  not,  made  you  prove  to 
yourself,  by  your  own  common  sense,  that 
the  lowlands  of  Britain  were  underneath 
the  sea  in  the  days  in  which  these  pebbles 
and  boulders  were  laid  down  over  your 
plains  ?  Nay,  have  we  not  proved  more  ? 
Have  we  not  found  that  that  old  sea  was  an 
icy  sea  ?  Have  we  not  wandered  on,  step  by 
step,  into  a  whole  true  fairy-land  of  wonders  ? 
to  a  time  when  all  England,  Scotland,  and 
Ireland  were  as  Greenland  is  now?  when 
mud  streams  have  rushed  down  from  under 
glaciers  on  to  a  cold  sea-bottom,  when  "  ice, 
mast  high,  came  floating  by,  as  green  as 
emerald?"  when  Snowdon  was  sunk  for  at 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  75 

least  fourteen  hundred  feet  of  its  height  ?  when 
(as  I  could  prove  to  you,  had  I  time)  the 
peaks  of  the  highest  Cumberland  and  Scotch 
mountains  alone  stood  out,  as  islets  in  a 
frozen  sea  ? 

We  want  to  get  an  answer  to  one  strange 
question,  and  we  have  found  a  group  of  ques- 
tions stranger  still,  and  got  them  answered 
too.  But  so  it  is  always  in  science.  We 
know  not  what  we  shall  discover.  But  this, 
at  least,  we  know,  that  it  will  be  far  more 
wonderful  than  we  had  dreamed.  The  scien- 
tific explorer  is  always  like  Saul  of  old,  who 
set  out  simply  to  find  his  father's  asses,  and 
found  them — and  a  kingdom  besides. 

I  should  have  liked  to  have  told  you  more 
about  this  bygone  age  of  ice.  I  should  have 
liked  to  say  something  to  you  on  the  curious 
question — which  is  still  an  open  one — whether 
there  were  not  two  ages  of  ice ;  whether  the 


f6  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

climate  here  did  not,  after  perhaps  thousands 
of  years  of  Arctic  cold,  soften  somewhat  for  a 
while — a  few  thousand  years,  perhaps — and 
then  harden  again  into  a  second  age  of  ice, 
somewhat  less  severe,  probably,  than  the 
first.  I  should  have  liked  to  have  hinted  at 
the  probable  causes  of  this  change — indeed, 
of  the  age  of  ice  altogether — whether  it  was 
caused  by  a  change  in  the  distribution  of  land 
and  water,  or  by  change  in  the  height  and 
size  of  these  islands,  which  made  them  large 
enough,  and  high  enough,  to  carry  a  sheet  of 
eternal  snow  inland  ;  or  whether,  finally,  the 
age  of  ice  was  caused  by  an  actual  change  in 
the  position  of  the  whole  planet  with  regard 
to  its  orbit  round  the  sun — shifting  at  once  the 
poles  and  the  tropics;  a  deep  question  that 
latter,  on  which  astronomers,  whose  business 
it  is,  are  still  at  work,  and  on  which,  ere 
young  folk  are  old,  they  will  have  discovered, 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  fj 

I  expect,  some  startling  facts.  On  that  last 
question,  I,  as  no  astronomer,  cannot  speak. 
But  I  should  have  liked  to  have  said  some- 
what on  matters  on  which  I  have  knowledge 
enough,  at  least,  to  teach  you  how  much 
there  is  to  be  learnt.  I  should  have  liked 
to  tell  the  student  of  sea-animals — how  the 
ice-age  helps  to  explain,  and  is  again  ex- 
plained by,  the  remarkable  discoveries  which 
Dr.  Carpenter  and  Mr.  Wyville  Thompson 
have  just  made,  in  the  deep-sea  dredgings  in 
the  North  Atlantic.  I  should  have  liked  to 
tell  the  botanist  somewhat  of  the  pre-glacial 
flora — the  plants  which  lived  here  before  the 
ice,  and  lasted,  some  of  them  at  least,  through 
all  those  ages  of  fearful  cold,  and  linger  still 
on  the  summits  of  Snowdon,  and  the  highest 
peaks  of  Cumberland  and  Scotland.  I  should 
have  liked  to  have  told  the  lovers  of  zoology 
about  the  animals  which  lived  before  the  ice— 


78  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

of    the  mammoth,   or   woolly   elephant;  the 

• 

woolly  rhinoceros,  the  cave  lion  and  bear, 
the  reindeer,  the  musk  oxen,  the  lemmings 
and  the  marmots  which  inhabited  Britain 
till  the  ice  drove  them  out  southward,  even 

0 

into  the  South  of  France;  and  how  as  the 
ice  retreated,  and  the  climate  became  tolerable 
once  more,  some  of  them — the  mammoth  and 
rhinoceros,  the  bison,  the  lion,  and  many 
another  mighty  beast  reoccupied  our  lowlands, 
at  a  time  when  the  hippopotamus,  at  least  in 
summer,  ranged  freely  from  Africa  and  Spain 
across  what  was  then  dry  land  between 
France  and  England,  and  fed  by  the  side  of 
animals  which  have  long  since  retreated  to 
Norway  and  to  Canada.  I  should  have  liked 
to  tell  the  archaeologist  of  the  human  beings— 
probably  from  their  weapons  and  their  habits 
— of  the  same  race  as  the  present  Laplanders, 
who  passed  northward  as  the  ice  went  back, 


THE    PEBBLES    IN    THE    STREET.  79 

following  the  wild  reindeer  herds  from  the 
South  of  France  into  our  islands,  which  were 
no  islands  then,  to  be  in  their  turn  driven 
northward  by  stronger  races  from  the  east 
and  south.  But  space  presses,  and  I  fear  that 
I  have  written  too  much  already. 

At  least,  I  have  turned  over  for  you  a  few 
grand  and  strange  pages  in  the  book  of 
nature,  and  taught  you,  I  hope,  a  key  by 
which  to  decipher  their  hieroglyphics.  At 
least,  I  have,  I  trust,  taught  you  to  look,  as  I 
do,  with  something  of  interest,  even  of  awe, 
upon  the  pebbles  in  the  street. 


I 

\: 


m. 

THE  STONES  IN  THE  WALL. 


*T*HIS  is  a  large  subject.  For  in  the  dif- 
ferent towns  of  these  islands,  the  walls 
are  built  of  stones  of  almost  every  age,  from 
the  earliest  to  the  latest  ;  and  the  town-geolo- 
gist may  find  a  quite  different  problem  to 
solve  in  the  nearest  wall,  on  moving  from  one 
town  to  another  twenty  miles  off.  All  I  can 
do,  therefore,  is  to  take  one  set  of  towns,  in 
the  walls  of  which  one  sort  of  stones  is  com- 
monly found,  and  talk  of  them  ;  taking  care, 
of  course,  to  choose  a  stone  which  is  widely 
distributed.  And  such,  I  think,  we  can  find 
in  the  so-called  New  Red  sandstone,  which, 
with  its  attendant  marls,  covers  a  vast  tract— 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  8l 

and  that  a  rich  and  busy  one — of  England. 
From  Hartlepool  and  the  mouth  of  the  Tees, 
down  through  Yorkshire  and  Nottingham- 
shire ;  over  the  manufacturing  districts  of 
central  England ;  down  the  valley  of  the 
Severn ;  past  Bristol  and  the  Somersetshire 
flats  to  Torquay  in  South  Devon ;  up  north- 
westward through  Shropshire  and  Cheshire; 
past  Liverpool  and  northward  through  Lanca- 
shire ;  reappearing  again,  north  of  the  Lake 
mountains,  about  Carlisle  and  the  Scotch  side 
of  the  Solway  Frith,  stretches  the  New  Red 
sandstone  plain,  from  under  which  every- 
where the  coal-bearing  rocks  rise  as  from  a 
sea.  It  contains,  in  many  places,  excellent 
quarries  of  building  stone;  the  most  famous 
of  which,  perhaps,  are  the  well-known  Run- 
corn  quarries,  near  Liverpool,  from  which  the 
old  Romans  brought  the  material  for  the  walls 
and  temples  of  ancient  Chester,  and  from 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


which  the  stone  for  the  restoration  of  Chester 
Cathedral  is  being  taken  at  this  day.  In 
some  quarters,  especially  in  the  north-west 
of  England,  its  soil  is  poor,  because  it  is 
masked  by  that  very  boulder-clay  of  which  I 
spoke  in  my  last  paper.  But  its  rich  red 
marls,  wherever  they  come  to  the  surface,  are 
one  of  God's  most  precious  gifts  to  this  fa- 
voured land.  On  them,  one  finds  oneself  at 
once  in  a  garden ;  amid  the  noblest  of  timber, 
wheat,  roots,  grass  which  is  green  through 
the  driest  summers,  and,  in  the  western  coun- 
ties, cider-orchards  laden  with  red  and  golden 
fruit.  I  know,  throughout  northern  Europe, 
no  such  charming  scenery,  for  quiet  beauty 
and  solid  wealth,  as  that  of  the  New  Red 
marls;  and  if  I  wished  to  show  a  foreigner 
what  England  was,  I  should  take  him  along 
them,  from  Yorkshire  to  South  Devon,  and 
say — There.  Is  not  that  a  country  worth 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  8$ 

living  for,  —  and  worth  dying  for  if  need 
be? 

Another  reason  which  I  have  for  dealing 
with  the  New  Red  sandstone  is  this — that 
(as  I  said  just  now)  over  great  tracts  of  Eng- 
land, especially  about  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts, the  town- geologist  will  find  it  covered 
immediately  by  the  boulder  clay. 

The  townsman,  finding  this,  would  have  a 
fair  right  to  suppose  that  the  clay  was  laid 
down  immediately,  or  at  least  soon  after,  the 
sandstones  or  marls  on  which  it  lies  ;  that  as 
soon  as  the  one  had  settled  at  the  bottom  of 
some  old  sea,  the  other  settled  on  the  top  of 
it,  in  the  same  sea. 

A  fair  a"nd  reasonable  guess,  which  would 
in  many  cases,  indeed  in  most,  be  quite  true. 
But  in  this  case  it  would  be  a  mistake. 
The  sandstone  and  marls  are  immensely 
older  than  the  boulder-clay.  They  are,  hu- 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


manly  speaking,  some  four  or  five  worlds 
older. 

What  do  I  mean  ?  This — that  between 
the  time  when  the  one,  and  the  time  when 
the  other,  was  made,  the  British  Islands, 
and  probably  the  whole  continent  of  Eu- 
rope, have  changed  four  or  five  times ;  in 
shape ;  in  height  above  the  sea,  or  depth 
below  it ;  in  climate ;  in  the  kinds  of  plants 
and  animals  which  have  dwelt  on  them, 
or  on  their  sea -bottoms.  And  surely  it 
is  not  too  strong  a  metaphor,  to  call  such 
changes  a  change  from  an  old  world  to  a 
new  one. 

Mind.  I  do  not  say  that  these  changes 
were  sudden  or  violent.  It  is  far  more  pro- 
bable that  they  are  only  part  and  parcel  of 
that  vast,  but  slow  change  which  is  going  on 
everywhere  over  our  whole  globe.  I  think 
that  will  appear  probable  in  the  course  of 


THE    STONES     IN    THE    WALL.  85 

this  paper.  But  that  these  changes  have 
taken  place,  is  my  main  thesis.  The  fact  I 
assert ;  and  I  am  bound  to  try  and  prove  it. 
And  in  trying  to  do  so,  I  shall  no  longer  treat 
my  readers,  as  I  did  in  the  first  two  papers, 
like  children.  I  shall  take  for  granted  that 
they  now  understand  something  of  the  method 
by  which  geological  problems  are  worked 
out ;  and  can  trust  it,  and  me ;  and  shall 
state  boldly  the  conclusions  of  geologists, 
only  giving  proof  where  proof  is  specially 
needed. 

Now  you  must  understand  that  in  England 
there  are  two  great  divisions  of  these  New 
Red  sandstones,  "Trias,"  as  geologists  call 
them.  An  upper,  called  in  Germany  Keuper, 
which  consists,  atop,  of  the  rich  red  marl, 
below  them,  of  sandstones,  and  of  those  vast 
deposits  of  rock-salt,  which  have  been  long 
worked,  and  worked  to  such  good  purpose, 


86  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


that  a  vast  subsidence  of  land  has  just  taken 
place  near  Nantwich  in  Cheshire;  and  serious 
fears  are  entertained  lest  the  town  itself  may 
subside,  to  fill  up  the  caverns  below,  from 
whence  the  salt  has  been  quarried.  Under- 
neath these  beds  again  are  those  which  carry 
the  building-stone  of  Runcorn.  Now  these 
beds  altogether,  in  Cheshire,  at  least,  are 
about  3,400  feet  thick ;  and  were  not  laid 
down  in  a  year,  or  in  a  century  either. 

Below  them  lies -a  thousand  feet  of  sand- 
stones, known  in  Germany  by  the  name  of 
"  Bunter,"  from  its  mottled  and  spotted  ap- 
pearance. What  lies  under  them  again,  does 
not  concern  us  just  now. 

I  said  that  the  geologists  called  these  beds 
the  Trias,  that  is,  the  triple  group.  But  as 
yet  we  have  heard  of  only  two  parts  of  it. 
Where  is  the  third  ? 

Not  here,  but  in  Germany.    There,  between 


THE     STONES     IN     THE    WALL.  8/ 

the  Keuper  above  and  the  Bunter  below,  lies 
a  great  series  of  limestone  beds,  which,  from 
the  abundance  of  fossils  which  they  contain, 
go  by  the  name  of  Muschelkalk.  A  long 
epoch  must  therefore  have  intervened  between 
the  laying  down  of  the  Bunter  and  of  the 
Keuper.  And  we  have  a  trace  of  that  long 
epoch,  even  in  England.  The  Keuper  lies, 
certainly,  immediately  on  the  Bunter ;  but 
not  always  "conformably"  on  it.  That  is, 
the  beds  are  not  exactly  parallel.  The 
Bunter  had  been  slightly  tilted,  and  slightly 
waterworn,  before  the  Keuper  was  laid 
on  it. 

It  is  reasonable,  therefore,  to  suppose,  that 
the  Bunter  in  England  was  dry  land,  and 
therefore  safe  from  fresh  deposit,  through 
ages  during  which  it  was  deep  enough  be- 
neath the  sea  in  Germany,  to  have  the  Mus 
chelkalk  laid  down  on  it.  Here  again,  then, 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


as  everywhere,  we  have  evidence  of  time — 
— time,  not  only  beyond  all  counting,  but 
beyond  all  imagining. 

And  now,  perhaps,  the  reader  will  ask — • 
If  I  am  to  believe  that  all  new  land  is  made 
out  of  old  land,  and  that  all  rocks  and  soils 
are  derived  from  the  wear  and  tear  of  still 
older  rocks,  off  what  land  came  this  enormous 
heap  of  sands,  more  than  5,000  feet  thick  in 
places,  stretching  across  England  and  into 
Germany  ? 

It  is  difficult  to  answer.  The  shape  and 
distribution  of  land  in  those  days  were  so 
different  from  what  they  are  now,  that  the 
rocks  which  furnished  a  great  deal  of  our 
sandstone  may  be  now,  for  ought  I  know,  a 
mile  beneath  the  sea. 

But  over  the  land  which  still  stands  out  of 
the  sea  near  us  there  has  been  wear  and  tear 
enough  to  account  for  any  quantity  of  sand 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  89 

deposit.  As  a  single  instance — It  is  a  prov- 
able and  proven  fact — as  you  may  see  from 
Mr.  Ramsay's  survey  of  North  Wales — that 
over  a  large  tract  to  the  south  of  Snowdon, 
between  Port  Madoc  and  Barmouth,  there  has 
been  ground  off  and  carried  away  a  mass  of 
solid  rock  20,000  feet  thick ;  thick  enough, 
in  fact,  if  it  were  there  still,  to  make  a  range 
of  mountains  as  high  as  the  Andes.  It  is  a 
provable  and  proven  fact  that  vast  tracts  of 
the  centre  of  poor  old  Ireland  were  once 
covered  with  coal-measures,  which  have  been 
scraped  off  in  likewise,  deprived  of  inestim- 
able mineral  wealth.  The  destruction  of  rocks 
— "  denudation  "  as  it  is  called — in  the  district 
round  Malvern,  is,  I  am  told,  provably  enor- 
mous. Indeed,  it  is  so  over  all  Wales,  North 
England,  and  West  and  North  Scotland.  So 
there  is  enough  of  rubbish  to  be  accounted 
for  to  make  our  New  Red  sands.  The  round 


90  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

pebbles  in  it  being,  I  believe,  pieces  of  Old 
Red  sandstone,  may  have  come  from  the 
great  Old  Red  sandstone  region  of  South- 
East  Wales  and  Herefordshire.  Some  of  the 
rubbish,  too,  may  have  come  from  what  is 
now  the  Isle  of  Anglesey. 

For  you  find  in  the  beds,  from  the  top  to 
the  bottom  (at  least  in  Cheshire),  particles 
of  mica.  Now  this  mica  could  not  have 
been  formed  in  the  sand.  It  is  a  definite 
crystalline  mineral,  whose  composition  is  well 
known.  It  is  only  found  in  rocks  which  have 
been  subjected  to  immense  pressure,  and  pro- 
bably to  heat.  The  granites  and  mica-slates 
of  Anglesey  are  full  of  it ;  and  from  Anglesey 
— as  likely  as  from  anywhere  else — these  thin 
scales  of  mica  came.  And  that  is  about  all 
that  I  can  say  on  the  matter.  But  it  is  cer- 
tain that  most  of  these  sands  were  deposited 
in  a  very  shallow  water,  and  very  near  to 


THE    STONES     IN    THE    WALL.  9! 

land.  Sand  and  pebbles,  as  I  said  in  my 
first  paper,  could  not  be  carried  far  out  to 
sea ;  and  some  of  the  beds  of  the  Bunter  are 
full  of  rounded  pebbles.  Nay,  it  is  certain 
that  their  surface  was  often  out  of  water.  Of 
that  you  may  see  very  pretty  proofs.  You 
find  these  sands  ripple-marked,  as  you  do 
shore-sands  now.  You  find  cracks  where  the 
marl  mud  has  dried  in  the  sun :  and,  more, 
you  find  the  little  pits  made  by  rain.  Of 
that  I  have  no  doubt.  I  have  seen  specimens, 
in  which  you  could  not  only  see  at  a  glance 
that  the  marks  had  been  made  by  the  large 
drops  of  a  shower,  but  see  also  from  what 
direction  the  shower  had  come.  These  delicate 
markings  must  have  been  covered  up  imme- 
diately with  a  fresh  layer  of  mud  or  sand.  How 
long  since  ?  How  long  since  that  flag  had 
seen  the  light  of  the  sun,  when  it  saw  it  once 

again,  restored  to  the  upper  air  by  the  pick 

10*  V 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


of  the  quarryman  ?     Who  can  answer  that  ? 
Not  I. 

Fossils  are  very  rare  in  these  sands  ;  it  is 
not  easy  to  say  why.  It  may  be  that  the  red 
oxide  of  iron  in  them  has  destroyed  them. 
Few  or  none  are  ever  found  in  beds  in  which 
it  abounds.  It  is  curious,  too,  that  the  Keuper 
which  is  all  but  barren  of  fossils  in  England, 
is  full  of  them  in  Wiirtemberg,  reptiles,  fish, 
and  remains  of  plants  being  common.  But 
what  will  interest  the  reader  are  the  foot- 
prints of  a  strange  beast,  found  alike  in 
England  and  in  Germany  —  the  Cheirotherium, 
as  it  was  first  named,  from  its  hand-like  feet  ; 
the  Labyrinthodon,  as  it  is  now  named,  from 
the  extraordinary  structure  of  its  teeth.  There 
is  little  doubt  now,  among  anatomists,  that 
the  bones  and  teeth  of  the  so-called  Labyrin- 
thodon belong  to  the  animal  which  made  the 
footprints.  If  so,  the  creature  must  have  been 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  93 

a  right  loathly  monster.  Some  think  him  to 
have  been  akin  to  lizards  ;  but  the  usual 
opinion  is  that  he  was  a  cousin  of  frogs  and 
toads.  Looking  at  his  hands  and  other  re- 
mains, one  pictures  him  to  oneself  as  a  short, 
squat  brute,  as  big  as  a  fat  hog,  with  a  head 
very  much  the  shape  of  a  baboon,  very  large 
hands  behind  and  small  ones  in  front,  wad- 
dling about  on  the  tide  flats  of  a  sandy  sea, 
and  dragging  after  him,  seemingly,  a  short 
tail,  which  has  left  its  mark  on  the  sand. 
What  his  colour  was,  whether  he  was  smooth 
or  warty,  what  he  ate,  and  in  general  how 
he  got  his  living,  we  know  not.  But  there 
must  have  been  something  there  for  him  to 
eat ;  and  I  dare  say  that  he  was  about  as 
happy  and  about  as  intellectual  as  a  toad  is 
now.  Remember  always  that  there  is  nothing 
alive  now  exactly  like  him,  or,  indeed,  like 
any  animal  found  in  these  sandstones.  The 


94  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

whole  animal  world  of  this  planet  has  changed 
entirely  more  than  once  since  the  Labyrin- 
thodon  waddled  over  the  Cheshire  flats.  A 
lizard,  for  instance,  which  has  been  found  in 
the  Keuper,  had  a  skull  like  a  bird's,  and  no 
teeth — a  type  which  is  now  quite  extinct. 
But  there  is  a  more  remarkable  animal  of 
which  I  must  say  a  few  words,  and  one  which 
to  scientific  men  is  most  interesting  and  signi- 
ficant. 

Both  near  Warwick,  and  near  Elgin  in 
Scotland,  in  Central  India,  and  in  South 
Africa,  fossil  remains  are  found  of  a  family 
of  lizards  utterly  unlike  anything  now  living 
save  one,  and  that  one  is  crawling  about, 
plentifully  I  believe — of  all  places  in  the 
world — in  New  Zealand.  How  it  got  there; 
how  so  strange  a  type  of  creature  should 
have  died  out  over  the  rest  of  the  world,  and 
yet  have  lasted  on  in  that  remote  island  for 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  95 

long  ages,  ever  since  the  days  of  the  New 
Red  sandstone,  is  one  of  those  questions — 
quite  awful  questions  I  consider  them — with 
which  I  will  not  puzzle  my  readers.  I  only 
mention  it  to  show  them  what  serious  ques- 
tions the  scientific  man  has  to  face,  and  to 
answer,  if  he  can.  Only  the  next  time  they 
go  to  the  Zoological  Gardens  in  London,  let 
them  go  to  the  reptile-house,  and  ask  the  very 
clever  and  courteous  attendant  to  show  them 
the  Sphenodons,  or  Hatterias,  as  he  will  pro- 
bably call  them — and  then  look,  I  hope  with 
kindly  interest,  at  the  oldest  Conservatives 
they  ever  saw,  or  are  like  to  see ;  gentlemen 
of  most  ancient  pedigree,  who  have  remained 
all  but  unchanged,  while  the  whole  surface  of 
the  globe  has  changed  around  them  more 
than  once  or  twice. 

And  now,  of  course,  my  readers  will  expect 
to  hear  something  of  the  deposits  of  rock- 


96  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


salt,  for  which  Cheshire  and  its  red  rocks  are 
famous.  I  have  never  seen  them,  and  can 
only  say  that  the  salt  does  not,  it  is  said  by 
geologists,  lie  in  the  sandstone,  but  at  the 
bottom  of  the  red  marl  which  caps  the  sand- 
stone. It  was  formed  most  probably  by  the 

gradual  drying  up  of  lagoons,  such   as  are 

• 

depositing  salt,  it  is  said  now,  both  in  the 
Gulf  of  Tadjara,  on  the  Abyssinian  frontier 
opposite  Aden,  and  in  the  Runn  of  Cutch, 
near  the  Delta  of  the  Indus.  If  this  be  so, 
then  these  New  Red  sandstones  may  be  the 
remains  of  a  whole  Sahara — a  sheet  of  sandy 
and  all  but  lifeless  deserts,  reaching  from  the 
west  of  England  into  Germany,  and  rising 
slowly  out  of  the  sea;  to  sink,  as  we  shall 
find,  beneath  the  sea  again. 

And  now,  as  to  the  vast  period  of  time — 
the  four  or  five  worlds,  as  I  called  it — which 
elapsed  between  the  laying  down  of  the  New 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  97 

Red  sandstones  and  the  laying  down  of  the 
boulder-clays. 

I  think  this  fact — for  fact  it  is — may  be 
better  proved  by  taking  readers  an  imaginary 
railway  journey  to  London  from  any  spot  in 
the  manufacturing  districts  of  central  England 
— begging  them,  meanwhile,  to  keep  their 
eyes  open  on  the  way. 

And  here  I  must  say  that  I  wish  folks  in 
general  would  keep  their  eyes  a  little  more 
open  when  they  travel  by  rail.  When  1  see 
young  people  rolling  along  in  a  luxurious 
carriage,  their  eyes  and  their  brains  absorbed 
probably  in  a  trashy  shilling  novel,  and  never 
lifted  up  to  look  out  of  the  window,  uncon- 
scious of  all  that  they  are  passing — of  the 
reverend  antiquities,  the  admirable  agricul- 
ture, the  rich  and  peaceful  scenery,  the  like 
of  which  no  country  upon  earth  can  show; 
unconscious,  too,  of  how  much  they  might 


98  TOWN   GEOLOGY. 

learn  of  botany  and  zoology,  by  simply  watch- 
ing the  flowers  along  the  railway  banks  and 
the  sections  in  the  cuttings:  then  it  grieves 
me  to  see  what  little  use  people  make  of  the 
eyes  and  of  the  understanding  which  God  has 
given  them.  They  complain  of  a  dull  journey : 
but  it  is  not  the  journey  which  is  dull ;  it  is 
they  who  are  dull.  Eyes  have  they,  and  see 
not ;  ears  have  they,  and  hear  not ;  mere  dolls 
in  smart  clothes,  too  many  of  them,  like  the 
idols  of  the  heathen. 

But  my  readers,  I  trust,  are  of  a  better 
mind.  So  the  next  time  they  find  themselves 
running  up  southward  to  London — or  the 
reverse  way — let  them  keep  their  eyes  open, 
and  verify,  with  the  help  of  a  geological  map, 
the  SKetch  which  is  given  in  the  following 
pages. 

Of  the  "  Black  Countries  "—the  actual  coal 
districts — I  shall  speak  hereafter.  They  are 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  99 

in  England  either  shores  or  islands  yet 
undestroyed,  which  stand  out  of  the  great  sea 
of  New  Red  sandstone,  and  often  carry  along 
their  edges  layers  of  far  younger  rocks,  called 
now  Permian,  from  the  ancient  kingdom  of 
Permia,  in  Russia,  where  they  cover  a  vast 
area.  With  them  I  will  not  confuse  the 
reader  just  now,  but  will  only  ask  him  to  keep 
his  eye  on  the  rolling  plain  of  New  Red  sands 
and  marls  past,  say,  Birmingham  and  War- 
wick. After  those  places,  these  sands  and 
marls  dip  to  the  south-east,  and  other  rocks 
and  soils  appear  above  them,  one  after 
another,  dipping  likewise  towards  the  south- 
east— that  is,  toward  London. 

First  appear  thin  layers  of  a  very  hard  blue 
limestone,  full  of  shells,  and  parted  by  layers 
ot  blue  mud.  That  rock  runs  in  a  broad  belt 
across  England,  from  Whitby  in  Yorkshire,  to 
Lyme  in  Dorsetshire,  and  is  known  as  Lias. 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


Famous  it  is,  as  some  readers  may  know,  for 
holding  the  bones  of  extinct  monsters — 
Icthyosaurs  and  Plesiosaurs,  such  as  the 
unlearned  may  behold  in  the  lake  at  the 
Crystal  Palace.  On  this  rock  lie  the  rich 
cheese  pastures,  and  the  best  tracts  of  the 
famous  "  hunting  shires  "  of  England. 

Lying  on  it,  as  we  go  south-eastward, 
appear  alternate  beds  of  sandy  limestone, 
with  vast  depths  of  clay  between  them. 
These  "  oolites,"  or  freestones,  furnish  the 
famous  Bath  stone,  the  Oxford  stone,  and  the 
Barnack  stone  of  Northamptonshire,  of  which 
some  of  the  finest  cathedrals  are  built — a 
stone  only  surpassed,  I  believe,  by  the  Caen 
stone,  which  comes  from  beds  of  the  same  age 
in  Normandy.  These  freestones  and  clays 
abound  in  fossils,  but  of  kinds,  be  it  remem- 
bered, which  differ  more  and  more  from  those 
of  the  lias  beneath,  as  the  beds  are  higher  in 


THE    STONES     IN    THE    WALL. 


the  series,  and  therefore  nearer,  There,  too, 
are  found  principally  the  bones  of  that  extra- 
ordinary flying  lizard,  the  Pterodactyle,  which 
had  wings  formed  out  of  its  fore-legs,  on 
somewhat  the  same  plan  as  those  of  a  bat ; 
but  with  one  exception.  In  the  bat,  as  any 
one  may  see,  four  fingers  of  the  hand  are 
lengthened  to  carry  the  wing,  while  the  first 
alone  is  left  free,  as  a  thumb  :  but  in  the 
Pterodactyle,  the  outer  or  *'  little "  finger 
alone  is  lengthened,  and  the  other  four 
fingers  left  free— one  of  those  strange  instances 
in  nature  of  the  same  effect  being  produced 
in  widely  different  plants  and  animals,  and 
yet  by  slightly  different  means,  on  which 
a  whole  chapter  of  natural  philosophy — say, 
rather,  natural  theology — will  have  to  be 
written  some  day. 

But  now  consider  what  this  Lias,  and  the 
Oolites  and  clays  upon  it,  mean.     They  mean 


102  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

that  the  New  Red  sandstone,  after  it  had 
been  dry  land,  or  all  but  dry  land  (as  is 
proved  by  the  footprints  of  animals  and  the 
deposits  of  salt),  was  sunk  again  beneath  the 
sea.  Each  deposit  of  limestone  signifies  a 
long  period  of  time,  during  which  that  sea 
was  pure  enough  to  allow  reefs  of  coral  to 
grow,  and  shells  to  propagate,  at  the  bottom. 
Each  great  band  of  clay  signifies  a  long 
period,  during  which  fine  mud  was  brought 
down  from  some  wasting  land  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. And  that  land  was  not  far  distant 
is  proved  by  the  bones  of  the  Pterodactyle,  of 
Crocodiles,  and  of  Marsupials ;  by  the  fact 
that  the  shells  are  of  shallow-water  or  shore 
species ;  by  the  presence,  mixed  with  them, 
of  fragments  of  wood,  impressions  of  plants, 
and  even  wing-shells  of  beetles  ;  and  lastly,  if 
further  proof  was  needed,  by  the  fact  that  in 
the  "  dirt-bed  "  of  the  Isle  of  Portland  and  the 


THE     STONES    IN    THE'  WALL. 


neighbouring  shores,  stumps  of  trees  allied 
to  the  modern  sago-palms  are  found  as  they 
grew  in  the  soil,  which,  with  them,  has  been 
covered  up  in  layers  of  freshwater  shale  and 
limestone.  A  tropic  forest  has  plainly  sunk 
beneath  a  lagoon;  and  that  lagoon,  again, 
beneath  the  sea. 

And  how  long  did  this  period  of  slow 
sinking  go  on  ?  Who  can  tell  ?  The  thick- 
ness of  the  Lias  and  Oolites  together  cannot 
be  less  than  a  thousand  feet.  Considering, 
then,  the  length  of  time  require  1  to  lay  down 
a  thousand  feet  of  strata,  and  considering  the 
vast  difference  between  the  animals  found  in 
them,  and  the  few  found  in  the  New  Red 
sandstone,  we  have  a  right  to  call  them 
another  world,  and  that  one  which  must  have 
lasted  for  ages. 

Alter  we  pass  Oxford,  or  the  Vale  of  Ayles- 
bury,  we  enter  yet  another  world.  We  come 


IO4  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

to  a  bed  of  sand,  under  which  the  freestones 
and  their  adjoining  clays  dip  to  the  south- 
east. This  is  called  commonly  the  lower 
Greensand,  though  it  is  not  green,  but  rich  iron- 
red.  Then  succeeds  a  band  of  stiff  blue  clay, 
called  the  gault,  and  then  another  bed  of  sand, 
the  upper  Greensand,  which  is  more  worthy  of 
the  name,  for  it  does  carry,  in  most  places,  a 
band  of  green  or  "  glauconite  "  sand.  But  it 
arid  the  upper  layers  of  the  lower  Greensand 
also,  are  worth  our  attention ;  for  we  are  all 
probably  eating  them  from  time  to  time  in  the 
form  of  bran. 

It  had  been  long  remarked  that  certain 
parts  of  these  beds  carried  admirable  wheat- 
land  ;  it  had  been  remarked,  too,  that  the 
finest  hop-lands — those  of  Farnham,  for  in- 
stance, and  Tunbridge — lay  upon  them :  but 
that  the  fertile  band  was  very  narrow ;  that, 
as  in  the  Surrey  moors,  vast  sheets  of  the 


THE     STONES    IN    THE    WALL. 


lower  Greensand  were  not  worth  cultivation. 
What  caused  the  striking  difference  ? 

My  beloved  friend  and  teacher,  the  late  Dr. 
Henslow,  when  Professor  of  Botany  at  Cam- 
bridge, had  brought  to  him  by  a  farmer  (so 
the  story  ran)  a  few  fossils.  He  saw,  being 
somewhat  of  a  geologist  and  chemist,  that 
they  were  not,  as  fossils  usually  are,  carbonate 
of  lime,  but  phosphate-  of  lime  —  bone-earth. 
He  said  at  once,  as  by  an  inspiration,  "  You 
have  found  a  treasure  —  not  a  gold-mine, 
indeed,  but  a  food-mine.  This  is  bone-earth, 
which  we  are  at  our  wits'  end  to  get  for 
our  grain  and  pulse  ;  which  we  are  importing, 
as  expensive  bones,  all  the  way  from  Buenos 
Ayres.  Only  find  enough  of  them,  and  you 
will  increase  immensely  the  food  supply  ot 
England,  and  perhaps  make  her  independent 
of  foreign  phosphates  in  case  of  war." 

His  advice  was  acted  on  ;    for  the  British 


106  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

farmer  is  by  no  means  the  stupid  personage 
which  townsfolk  are  too  apt  to  fancy  him. 
This  bed  of  phosphates  was  found  everywhere 
in  the  Greensand,  underlying  the  Chalk.  It 
may  be  traced  from  Dorsetshire  through 
England  to  Cambridge,  and  thence,  I  believe, 
into  Yorkshire.  It  may  be  traced  again,  I 
believe,  all  round  the  Weald  of  Kent  and 
Sussex,  from  Hythe  to  Farnham — where  it  is 
peculiarly  rich — and  so  to  Eastbourne  and 
Beachey  Head ;  and  it  furnishes,  in  Cam- 
bridgeshire, the  greater  part  of  those  so-called 
"  coprolites,"  which  are  used  perpetually  now 
for  manure,  being  ground  up,  and  then  treated 
with  sulphuric  acid,  till  they  become  a 
"  soluble  super-phosphate  of  lime." 

So  much  for  the  useless  "hobby,"  as  some 
fancy  it,  of  poking  over  old  bones  and  stones, 
and  learning  a  little  of  the  composition  oi 
this  earth  on  which  God  has  placed  us. 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  107 

How  to  explain  the  presence  of  this  vast 
mass  of  animal  matter,  in  one  or  two  thin 
bands  right  across  England,  I  know  not 
That  the  fossils  have  been  rolled  on  a  sea- 
beach  is  plain  to  those  who  look  at  them. 
But  what  caused  so  vast  a  destruction  of 
animal  life  along  that  beach,  must  remain  one 
of  the  buried  secrets  of  the  past. 

And  now  we  are  fast  nearing  another 
world,  which  is  far  younger  than  that  copro- 
lite  bed,  and  has  been  formed  under  circum- 
stances the  most  opposite  to  it.  We  are 
nearing,  by  whatever  rail  we  approach 
London,  the  escarpment  of  the  chalk  downs. 

All  readers,  surely,  know  the  white  chalk, 
the  special  feature  and  the  special  pride  of  the 
south  of  England.  All  know  its  softly- 
rounded  downs,  its  vast  beech  woo  3s,  its 
short  and  sweet  turf,  its  snowy  cliffs,  which 
have  given — so  some  say — to  the  whole  isJand 


IO8  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

the  name  of  Albion — the  white  land.  But  all 
do  not,  perhaps,  know  that  till  we  get  to  the 
chalk  no  single  plant  or  animal  has  been 
found  which  is  exactly  like  any  plant  or 
animal  now  known  to  be  living.  The  plants 
and  animals  grow,  on  the  whole,  more  and 
more  like  our  living  forms  as  we  rise  in  the 
series  of  beds.  But  only  above  the  chalk  (as 
far  as  we  yet  know)  do  we  begin  to  find 
species  identical  with  those  living  now. 

This  in  itself  would  prove  a  vast  lapse 
of  time.  We  shall  have  a  further  proof  of 
that  vast  lapse  when  we  examine  the  chalk 
itself.  It  is  composed — of  this  there  is  now 
no  doubt — almost  entirely  of  the  shells  of 
minute  animalcules;  and  animalcules  (I  use 
an  unscientific  word  for  the  sake  of  unscien- 
tific readers)  like  these,  and  in  some  cases 
identical  with  them,  are  now  forming  a  similar 
deposit  of  mud,  at  vast  depths,  over  the 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  109 

greater  part  of  the  Atlantic  sea-floor.  This 
fact  has  been  put  out  of  doubt  by  recent  deep- 
sea  dredgings.  A  whole  literature  has  been 
written  on  it  of  late.  Any  reader  who  wishes 
to  know  it,  need  only  ask  the  first  geologist 
he  meets;  and  if  he  has  the  wholesome 
instinct  of  wonder  in  him,  fill  his  imagination 
with  true  wonders,  more  grand  and  strange 
than  he  is  like  to  find  in  any  fairy-tale.  All 
I  have  to  do  with  the  matter  here  is,  to 
say  that,  arguing  from  the  known  to  the 
unknown,  from  the  Atlantic  deep-sea  ooze 
which  we  do  know  about,  to  the  chalk  which 
we  do  not  know  about,  the  whole  of  the  chalk 
must  have  been  laid  down  at  the  bottom  of  a 
deep  and  still  ocean,  far  out  of  the  reach  of 
winds,  tides,  and  even  currents,  as  a  great 
part  of  the  Atlantic  sea-floor  is  at  this  day. 

Prodigious!   says   the   reader.     And   so  it 
is.     Prodigious  to   think    that    that    shallow 


110  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

Greensand  shore,  strewed  with  dead  animals, 
should  sink  to  the  bottom  of  an  ocean, 
perhaps  a  mile,  perhaps  some  four  miles 
deep.  Prodigious  the  time  during  which  it 
must  have  lain  as  a  still  ocean-floor.  For  so 
minute  are  the  living  atomies  which  form  the 
ooze,  that  an  inch,  I  should  say,  is  as  much  as 
we  can  allow  for  their  yearly  deposit;  and 
the  chalk  is  at  least  a  thousand  feet  thick. 
It  may  have  taken,  therefore,  twelve  thousand 
years  to  form  the  chalk  alone.  A  rough 
guess,  of  course,  but  one  as  likely  to  be  two 
or  three  times  too  little,  as  two  or  three 
times  too  big.  Such,  or  somewhat  such, 
is  the  fact.  It  had  long  been  suspected, 
and  more  than  suspected;  and  the  late 
discoveries  of  Dr.  Carpenter  and  Dr.  Wy- 
ville  Thompson  have  surely  placed  it  beyond 
doubt. 
Thus,  surely,  if  we  call  the  Oolitic  beds  one 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  Ill 

new  world  above  the  New  Red  sandstone,  we 
must  call  the  chalk  a  second  new  world  in 
like  wise. 

I  will  not  trouble  the  reader  here  with  the 
reasons  why  geologists  connect  the  chalk 
with  the  greensands  below  it,  by  regular 
gradations,  in  spite  of  the  enormous  down- 
ward leap,  from  sea-shore  to  deep  ocean, 
which  the  beds  seem  (but  only  seem)  to  have 
taken.  The  change  —  like  all  changes  in 
geology  —  was  probably  gradual.  Not  by 
spasmodic  leaps  and  starts,  but  slowly  and 
stately,  as  befits  a  God  of  order,  of  patience, 
and  of  strength,  have  these  great  deeds  been 
done. 

But  we  have  not  yet  done  with  new  worlds 
or  new  prodigies  on  our  way  to  London,  as 
any  Londoner  may  ascertain  for  himself,  if 
he  will  run  out  a  few  miles  by  rail,  and  look 
in  any  cutting  or  pit,  where  the  surface  of 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


the  chalk,  and  the  beds  which  lie  on  it,  are 
exposed. 

On  the  chalk  lie — especially  in  the  Black- 
heath  and  Woolwich  district  —  sands  and 
clays.  And  what  do  they  tell  us  ? 

Of  another  new  world,  in  which  the  chalk 
has  been  lifted  up  again,  to  form  gradually, 
doubtless,  and  at  different  points  in  succession, 
the  shore  of  a  sea. 

But  what  proof  is  there  of  this  ? 

The  surface  of  the  chalk  is  not  flat  and 
smooth,  as  it  must  have  been  when  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  sea.  Jt  is  eaten  out  into  holes  and 
furrows,  plainly  by  the  gnawing  of  the  waves  ; 
and  on  it  lie,  in  many  places,  large  rolled 
flints  out  of  chalk  which  has  been  destroyed, 
beds  of  shore-shingle,  beds  of  oysters  lying 
as  they  grew,  fresh  or  brackish  water-shells 
standing  as  they  lived,  bits  of  lignite  (fossil 
wood  half  turned  to  coal),  and  (as  in  Kates- 


•    THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL.  113 

grove  pits  at  Reading)  leaves  of  trees.  Proof 
enough,  one  would  say,  that  the  chalk  had 
been  raised  till  part  of  it.  at  least  became  dry- 
land, and  carried  vegetation. 

And  yet  we  have  not  done.  There  is 
another  world  to  tell  of  yet. 

For  these  beds  (known  as  the  Woolwich 
and  Reading  beds)  dip  under  that  vast  bed  of 
London  clay,  four  hundred  and  more  feet 
thick,  which  (as  I  said  in  my  last  chapter)  was 
certainly  laid  down  by  the  estuary  of  some 
great  tropic  river,  among  palm-trees  and 
Anonas,  crocodiles  and  turtles. 

Is  the  reader's  power  of  belief  exhausted  ? 

If  not :  there  are  to  be  seen,  capping 
almost  every  high  land  round  London,  the 
remains  of  a  fifth  world.  Some  of  my  readers 
may  have  been  to  Ascot  races,  or  to  Alder- 
shot  camp,  and  may  recollect  the  table-land 
of  the  sandy  moors,  perfectly  flat  atop,  dreary 


114  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

enough  to  those  to  whom  they  are  not 
(as  they  have  long  been  to  me)  a  home  and 
a  work-field.  Those  sands  are  several  hun- 
dred feet  thick.  They  lie  on  the  London 
clay.  And  they  represent— the  reader  must 
take  geologists'  word  for  it — a  series  of  beds  in 
some  places  thousands  of  feet  thick,  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  in  the  Paris  basin,  in  the  vol- 
canic country  of  the  Auvergne,  in  Switzer- 
land, in  Italy ;  a  period  during  which  the 
land  must  at  first  have  swarmed  with  forms 
of  tropic  life,  and  then  grown— but  very  gra- 
dually— more  temperate,  and  then  colder  and 
colder  still ;  till  at  last  set  in  that  age  of  ice, 
which  spread  the  boulder  pebbles  over  all 
rocks  and  soils  indiscriminately,  from  the 
Lake  mountains  to  within  a  few  miles  of 
London. 

For  everywhere  about  those  Ascot  moors, 
the  top  of  the  sands  has  been  ploughed  by 


THE    STONES    IN    THE    WALL. 


shore-ice  in  winter,  as  they  lay  a-wash  in 
the  shallow  sea  ;  and  over  them,  in  many 
places,  is  spread  a  thin  sheet  of  ice  gravel, 
more  ancient,  the  best  geologists  think,  than 
the  boulder  and  the  boulder-clay. 

If  any  of  my  readers  asks  —  how  long  the 
period  was  during  which  those  sands  of 
Ascot  Heath  and  Aldershot  have  been  laid 
down,  I  cannot  tell.  But  this  we  can  tell. 
It  was  long  enough  to  see  such  changes  in 
land  and  sea,  that  maps  representing  Europe 
during  the  greater  part  of  that  period  (as  far 
as  we  can  guess  at  it)  look  no  more  like 
Europe  than  like  America  or  the  South  Sea 
Islands.  And  this  we  can  tell  besides  :  that 
that  period  was  long  enough  for  the  Swiss 
Alps  to  be  lifted  up  at  least  10,000  feet  of 
their  present  height.  And  that  was  a  work 
which  —  though  God  could,  if  He  willed  it, 
have  done  it  in  a  single  day  —  we  have  proof 

8 


Il6  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


positive  was  not  done  in  less  than  ages, 
beside  which  the  mortal  life  of  man  is  as  the 
life  of  the  gnat  which  dances  in  the  sun. 

And  all  this,  and  more — as  may  be  proved 
from  the  geology  of  foreign  countries — hap- 
pened between  the  date  of  the  boulder -clay, 
and  that  of  the  New  Red  sandstone  on  which 
it  rests. 


IV. 

THE  COAL  IN  THE  FIRE. 

Tl  IT  Y  dear  town- dwelling  readers,  let  me  tell 
you  now  something  of  a  geological 
product  well  known,  happily,  to  all  dwellers  in 
towns,  and  of  late  years,  thanks  to  railroad 
extension,  to  most  dwellers  in  country  dis- 
tricts :  I  mean  coal. 

Coal,  as  of  course  you  know,  is  commonly 
said  to  be  composed  of  vegetable  matter,  of 
the  leaves  and  stems  of  ancient  plants  and 
trees— a  startling  statement,  and  one  which 
I  do  not  wish  you  to  take  entirely  on  trust. 
I  shall  therefore  spend  a  few  pages  in  show- 
ing you  how  this  fact — for  fact  it  is — was 
discovered.  It  is  a  very  good  example  of 


JlS  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


reasoning  from  the  known  to  the  unknown. 
You  will  have  a  right  to  say  at  first  starting, 
"  Coal  is  utterly  different  in  look  from  leaves 
and  stems.  The  only  property  which  they 
seem  to  have  in  common  is  that  they  can  both 
burn."  True.  But  difference  of  mere  look 
may  be  only  owing  to  a  transformation,  or 
series  of  transformations.  There  are  plenty 
in  nature  quite  as  great,  and  greater.  What 
can  be  more  different  in  look,  for  instance, 
than  a  green  field  of  wheat  and  a  basket  of 
loaves  at  the  bakar's?  And  yet  there  is,  I 
trust,  no  doubt  whatsoever  that  the  bread  has 
been  once  green  wheat,  and  that  the  green 
wheat  has  been  transformed  into  bread — 
making  due  allowance,  of  course,  for  the 
bone-dust,  or  gypsum,  or  alum  with  which 
the  worthy  baker  may  have  found  it  profit- 
able to  adulterate  his  bread,  in  order  to  im- 
prove the  digestion  of  Her  Majesty's  subjects. 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE. 


But  you  may  say,  "  Yes,  but  we  can  see 
the  wheat  growing,  flowering,  ripening, 
reaped,  ground,  kneaded,  baked.  We  see, 
in  the  case  of  bread,  the  processes  of  the 
transformation  going  on:  but  in  the  case  of 
coal  we  do  not  see  the  wood  and  leaves  being 
actually  transformed  into  coal,  or  anything 
like  it." 

Now  suppose  we  laid  out  the  wheat  on  a 
table  in  a  regular  series,  such  as  you  may  see 
in  many  exhibitions  of  manufactures  ;  begin- 
ning with  the  wheat  plant  at  one  end,  and 
ending  with  the  loaf  at  the  other  ;  and  called 
in  to  look  at  them  a  savage  who  knew  no- 
thing of  agriculture  and  nothing  of  cookery  — 
called  in,  as  an  extreme  case,  the  man  in 
the  moon,  who  certainly  can  know  nothing 
of  either  ;  for  as  there  is  neither  air  nor  water 
round  the  moon,  there  can  be  nothing  to  grow 
there,  and  therefore  nothing  to  cook  —  and 


120  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


suppose  we  asked  him  to  study  the  series 
from  end  to  end.  Do  you  not  think  that 
the  man  in  the  moon,  if  he  were  half  as 
shrewd  as  Crofton  Croker  makes  him  in  his 
conversation  with  Daniel  O'Rourke,  would 
answer  after  due  meditation,  "How  the 
wheat  plant  got  changed  into  the  loaf  I 
cannot  see  from  my  experience  in  the  moon : 
but  that  it  has  been  changed,  and  that  the 
two  are  the  same  thing  I  do  see,  for  I  see 
all  the  different  stages  of  the  change."  And 
so  I  think  you  may  say  of  the  wood  and  the 
coal. 

The  man  in  the  moon  would  be  quite 
reasonable  in  his  conclusion ;  for  it  is  a  law, 
a  rule,  and  one  which  you  will  have  to  apply 
again  and  again  in  the  study  of  natural 
objects,  that  however  different  two  objects 
may  look  in  some  respects,  yet  if  you  can 
find  a  regular  series  of  gradations  between 


THE    COAL    IN     THE    FIRE. 


them,  with  all  shades  of  likeness,  first  to  one 
of  them  and  then  to  the  other,  then  you  have 
a  fair  right  to  suppose  them  to  be  only 
varieties  of  the  same  species,  the  same  kind 
of  thing,  and  that,  therefore,  they  have  a  com- 
mon origin. 

That  sounds  rather  magniloquent.  Let  me 
give  you  a  simple  example. 

Suppose  you  had  come  into  Britain  with 
Brute,  the  grandson  of  ^Eneas,  at  that  remote 
epoch  when  (as  all  archaeologists  know  who 
have  duly  read  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  and 
the  Arthuric  legends)  Britain  was  inhabited 
only  by  a  few  giants.  Now  if  you  had  met 
giants  with  one  head,  and  also  giants  with 
seven  heads,  and  no  others,  you  would  have 
had  a  right  to  say,  "There  are  two  breeds  of 
giants  here,  one-headed  and  seven-headed." 
But  if  you  had  found,  as  Jack  the  Giant- 
Killer  (who  belongs  to  the  same  old  cycle 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


of  myths)  appears  to  have  found,  two-headed 
giants  also,  and  three-headed,  and  giants, 
indeed,  with  any  reasonable  number  of  heads, 
would  you  not  have  been  justified  in  saying, 
"  They  are  all  of  the  same  breed,  after  all ; 
only  some  are  more  capitate,  or  heady,  than 
others  ?" 

I  hope  that  you  agree  to  that  reasoning ; 
for  by  it  I  think  we  arrive  most  surely  at  a 
belief  in  the  unity  of  the  human  race,  and 
that  the  Negro  is  actually  a  man  and  a 
brother. 

If  the  only  two  types  of  men  in  the  world 
were  an  extreme  white  type,  like  the  Nor- 
wegians, and  an  extreme  black  type,  like  the 
Negros,  then  there  would  be  fair  ground  for 
saying,  "These  two  types  have  been  always 
distinct ;  they  are  different  races,  who  have 
no  common  origin."  But  if  you  found,  as 
you  will  find,  many  types  of  man  showing 


THE    COAL    IN    THE     FIRE.  Jta,} 

endless  gradations  between  the  white  man 
arid  the  Negro,  and  not  only  that,  but  endless 
gradations  between  them  both  and  a  third 
type,  whose  extreme  perhaps  is  the  Chinese 
— endless  gradations,  I  say,  showing  every 
conceivable  shade  of  resemblance  or  differ- 
ence, till  you  often  cannot  say  to  what  type 
a  given  individual  belongs ;  and  all  of  them, 
however  different  from  each  other,  more  like 
each  other  than  they  are  like  any  other  crea- 
ture upon  earth;  then  you  are  justified  in 
saying,  "All  these  are  mere  varieties  of  one 
kind.  However  distinct  they  are  now,  they 
were  probably  like  each  other  at  first,  and 
therefore  all  probably  had  a  common  origin." 
That  seems  to  me  sound  reasoning,  and  ad- 
vanced natural  science  is  corroborating  it 
more  and  more  daily. 
Now  apply  the  same  reasoning  to  coal. 

You  may  find  about  the  world — you  may  see 

12* 


124  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

even  in  England  alone  —  every  gradation 
between  coal  and  growing  forest.  You  may 
see  the  forest  growing  in  its  bed  of  veget- 
able mould ;  you  may  see  the  forest  dead 
and  converted  into  peat,  with  stems  and 
roots  in  it ;  that,  again,  into  sunken  forests, 
like  those  to  be  seen  below  high-water 
mark  on  many  coasts  of  this  island.  You 
find  gradations  between  them  and  beds  of 
lignite,  or  wood  coal;  then  gradations  be- 
tween lignite  and  common  or  bituminous 
coal;  and  then  gradations  between  common 
coal  and  culm,  or  anthracite,  such  as  is  found 
in  South  Wales.  Have  you  not  a  right  to 
say,  "  These  are  all  but  varieties  of  the  same 
kind  of  thing  —  namely,  vegetable  matter  ? 
They  have  a  common  origin — namely,  woody 
fibre.  And  coal,  or  rather  culm,  is  the  last 
link  in  a  series  of  transformations  from  grow- 
ing vegetation  ?" 


THE    COAL     IN    THE    FIRE. 


This  is  our  first  theory.  Let  us  try  to 
verify  it,  as  scientific  men  are  in  the  habit 
of  doing,  by  saying,  If  that  be  true,  then 
something  else  is  likely  to  be  true  too. 

If  coal  has  all  been  vegetable  soil,  then 
it  is  likely  that  some  of  it  has  not  been  quite 
converted  into  shapeless  coal.  It  is  likely 
that  there  will  be  vegetable  fibre  still  to  be 
seen  here  and  there  ;  perhaps  leaves,  perhaps 
even  steins  of  trees,  as  in  a  peat  bog.  Let  us 
look  for  them. 

You  will  not  need  to  look  far.  The  coal, 
and  the  sands  and  shales  which  accompany 
the  coal,  are  so  full  of  plant-remains,  that 
three  hundred  species  were  known  to  Adolphe 
Brongniart  as  early  as  1  849,  and  that  number 
has  largely  increased  since. 

Now  one  point  is  specially  noticeable  about 
these  plants  of  the  coal;  namely,  that  they 
may  at  least  have  grown  in  swamps. 


126  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

First,  you  will  be  interested  if  you  study 
the  coal  flora,  with  the  abundance,  beauty, 
and  variety  of  the  ferns.  Now  ferns  in  these 
islands  grow  principally  in  rocky  woods, 
because  there,  beside  the  moisture,  they  get 
from  decaying  vegetable  or  decaying  rock, 
especially  limestone,  the  carbonic  acid  which 
is  their  special  food,  and  which  they  do  not 
get  on  our  dry  pastures,  and  still  less  in  our 
cultivated  fields.  But  in  these  islands  there 
are  two  noble  species,  at  least,  which  are 
true  swamp-ferns ;  the  Lastnea  Thelypteris, 
which  of  old  filled  the  fens,  but  is  now  all 
but  extinct ;  and  the  Osmunda,  or  King-fern, 
which,  as  all  know,  will  grow  wherever  it  is 
damp  enough  about  the  roots.  In  Hampshire, 
in  Devon,  and  Cornwall,  and  in  the  south-west 
of  Ireland,  the  King-fern  too  is  a  true  swamp 
fern.  But  in  the  Tropics  I  have  seen  more 
than  once  noble  tree-ferns  growing  in  wet 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE. 


savannahs  at  the  sea-level,  as  freely  as  in 
the  mountain-woods  ;  ferns  with  such  a  stem 
as  some  of  the  coal  ferns  had,  some  fifteen 
feet  in  height,  under  which,  as  one  rode  on 
horseback,  one  saw  the  blazing  blue  sky,  as 
through  a  parasol  of  delicate  lace,  as  men 
might  have  long  ages  since  have  seen  it, 
through  the  plumed  fronds  of  the  ferns  now 
buried  in  the  coal,  had  there  only  been  a 
man  then  created  to  enjoy  its  beauty. 

Next  we  find'  plants  called  by  geologists 
Calamites.  There  is  no  doubt  now  that  they 
are  of  the  same  family  as  our  Equiseta,  or 
horse-tails,  a  race  which  has,  over  most  parts 
of  the  globe,  dwindled  down  now  from  twenty 
or  thirty  feet  in  height,  as  they  were  in 
the  old  coal  measures,  to  paltry  little  weeds. 
The  tallest  Equisetum  in  England  —  the 
beautiful  E.  Telmateia  —  is  seldom  five  feet 
high.  But  they,  too,  are  mostly  mud  and 


ZS8  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


swamp  plants;    and  so   may  the   Calamites 
have  been. 

The  Lepidodendrons,  again,  are  without 
doubt  the  splendid  old  representatives  of  a 
family  now  dwindled  down  to  such  creeping 
things  as  our  club-mosses,  or  Lycopodiums. 
Now  it  is  a  certain  fact,  which  can  be  proved 
by  the  microscope,  that  a  very  great  part  of 
the  best  coal  is  actually  made  up  of  millions 
of  the  minute  seeds  of  club-mosses,  such  as 
grow — a  few  of  them,  and  those  very  small — 
on  our  moors  ;  a  proof,  surely,  not  only  of  the 
vast  amount  of  the  vegetation  in  the  coal- 
making  age,  but  also  of  the  vast  time  during 
which  it  lasted.  The  Lepidodendra  may  have 
been  fifty  or  sixty  feet  high.  There  is  not  a 
Lycopodium  in  the  world  now,  I  believe,  five 
feet  high.  But  the  club-mosses  are  now,  in 
these  islands  and  elsewhere,  lovers  of  wet 
and  peaty  soils,  and  so  may  their  huger 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE. 


prototypes  have  been,  in  the  old  forests  of 
the  coal. 

,  Of  the  Sigillariae  we  cannot  say  as  much 
with  certainty,  for  botanists  are  not  agreed 
as  to  what  low  order  of  flowerless  plants 
they  belong.  But  that  they  rooted  in  clay 
beds  there  is  proof,  as  you  will  hear  pre- 
sently. 

And  as  to  the  Conifers,  or  pine-like  trees  — 
the  Dadoxylon,  of  which  the  pith  goes  by  the 
name  of  Sternbergia,  and  the  uncertain  tree 
which  furnishes  in  some  coal-measures  bushels 
of  a  seed  connected  with  that  of  the  yew  — 
we  may  suppose  that  they  would  find  no 
more  difficulty  in  growing  in  swamps  than 
the  cypress,  which  forms  so  large  a  portion  of 
the  vegetation  in  the  swamps  of  the  Southern 
United  States. 

I  have  given  you  these  hints,  because  you 
will  naturally  wish  to  know  what  sort  ol  a. 


130  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

world  it  was  in  which  all  these  strange  plants 
grew  and  turned  into  coal. 

My  answer  is,  that  it  was  most  probably 
just  like  the  world  in  which  we  are  living 
now,  with  the  one  exception  that  the  plants 
and  animals  are  different. 

It  was  the  fashion  a  few  years  since  to 
explain  the  coal  —  like  other  phenomena  of 
geology— by  some  mere  hypothesis  of  a  state 
of  things  quite  unlike  what  we  see  now.  We 
were  brought  up  to  believe  that  in  the  Car- 
boniferous, or  coal-bearing  era,  the  atmo- 
sphere was  intensely  moist  and  hot,  and 
overcharged  with  carbonic  acid,  which  had 
been  poured  out  from  the  interior  of  the 
planet  by  volcanic  eruptions,  or  by  some 
other  convulsion.  I  forget  most  of  it  now: 
and  really  there  is  no  need  to  remember; 
for  it  is  all,  I  verily  believe,  a  dream — an 
attempt  to  explain  the  unknown  not  by  the 


THE     COAL    IN    THE     FIRE. 


known,  but  by  the  still  more  unknown.  You 
may  find  such  theories  lingering  still  in 
sensational  school-books,  if  you  like  to  be 
unscientific.  If  you  like,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  be  scientific,  you  will  listen  to  those  who 
tell  you  that  instead  of  there  having  been  one 
unique  carboniferous  epoch,  with  a  peculiar 
coal-making  climate,  all  epochs  are  carboni- 
ferous if  they  get  the  chance ;  that  coal  is  of 
every  age,  from  that  of  the  Scotch  and  English 
beds,  up  to  the  present  day.  The  great  coal- 
beds  along  the  Rocky  Mountains,  for  instance, 
are  tertiary — that  is,  later  than  the  chalk. 
Coal  is  forming  now,  I  doubt  not,  in  many 
places  on  the  earth,  and  would  form  in  many 
more,  if  man  did  not  interfere  with  the  pro- 
cesses of  wild  nature,  by  draining  the  fens, 
and  embanking  the  rivers. 

Let  me   by  a  few  words  prove  this  state- 
ment.    They  will  give  you,  beside,  a  fresh 


132  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

proof  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  great  geological  rule 
— that  the  best  way  to  explain  what  we  see 
in  ancient  rocks  is  to  take  for  granted,  as 
long  as  we  can  do  so  fairly,  that  things  were 
going  on  then  very  much  as  they  are  going 
on  now. 

When  it  was  first  seen  that  coal  had  been 
once  vegetable,  the  question  arose — How  did 
all  these  huge  masses  of  vegetable  matter  get 
there  ?  The  Yorkshire  and  Derbyshire  coal- 
fields, I  hear,  cover  700  or  800  square  miles ; 
the  Lancashire  about  200.  How  large  the 
North  Wales  and  the  Scotch  fields  are  I 
cannot  say.  But  doubtless  a  great  deal 
more  coal  than  can  be  got  at  lies  under  the 
sea,  especially  in  the  north  of  Wales.  Coal 
probably  exists  over  vast  sheets  of  England 
and  France,  buried  so  deeply  under  later 
rocks,  that  it  cannot  be  reached  by  mining. 
As  an  instance,  a  distinguished  geologist  has 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  133 

long  held  that  there  are  beds  of  coal  under 
London  itself,  which  rise,  owing  to  a  peculiar 
disturbance  of  the  strata,  to  within  1,000  or 
1,200  feet  of  the  surface,  and  that  we  or  our 
children  may  yet  see  coal  -  mines  in  the 
marshes  of  the  Thames.  And  more,  it  is  a 
provable  fact  that  only  a  portion  of  the  coal- 
measures  is  left.  A  great  part  of  Ireland 
must  once  have  been  covered  with  coal,  which 
is  now  destroyed.  Indeed,  it  is  likely  that 
the  coal  now  known  of  in  Europe  and  America 
is  but  a  remnant  of  what  has  existed  there  in 
former  ages,  and  has  been  eaten  away  by  the 
inroads  of  the  sea. 

Now  whence  did  all  that  enormous  mass 
of  vegetable  soil  come  ?  Off  some  neighbour- 
ing land,  was  the  first  and  most  natural 
answer.  It  was  a  rational  one.  It  proceeded 
from  the  known  to  the  unknown.  It  was 
elear  that  these  plants  had  grown  on  land; 


134  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

for  they  were  land-plants.  It  was  clear  that 
there  must  have  been  land  close  by.  for 
between  the  beds  of  coal,  as  you  all  know, 
the  rock  is  principally  coarse  sandstone, 
which  could  only  have  been  laid  down  (as 
I  have  explained  to  you  already)  in  very 
shallow  water. 

It  was  natural,  then,  to  suppose  that  these 
plants  and  trees  had  been  swept  down  by 
rivers  into  the  sea,  as  the  sands  and  muds 
which  buried  them  had  been.  And  'it  was 
known  that  at  the  mouths  of  certain  rivers — 
the  Mississippi,  for  instance  —  vast  rafts  of 
dead  floating  trees  accumulated;  and  that 
the  bottoms  of  the  rivers  were  often  full  of 
snags,  &c. ;  trees  which  had  grounded,  and 
stuck  in  the  mud ;  and  why  should  not  the 
coal  have  been  formed  in  the  same  way  ? 

Because — and  this  was  a  serious  objection 
— then  surely  the  coal  would  be  impure— 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE. 


mixed  up  with  mud  and  sand,  till  it  was 
not  worth  burning.  Instead  of  which,  the  coal 
is  usually  pure  vegetable,  parted  sharply  from 
the  sandstone  which  lies  on  it.  The  only 
other  explanation  was,  that  the  coal  vegeta- 
tion had  grown  in  the  very  places  where  it 
was  found.  But  that  seemed  too  strange 
to  be  true,  till  that  great  geologist,  Sir  W. 
Logan  —  who  has  since  done  such  good  work 
in  Canada  —  showed  that  every  bed  of  coal 
had  a  bed  of  clay  under  it,  and  that  that  clay 
always  contained  fossils  called  Stigmaria. 
Then  it  came  out  that  the  Stigmaria  in  the 
under  clay  had  long  filaments  attached  to 
them,  while,  when  found  in  the  sandstones 
or  shales,  they  had  lost  their  filaments,  and 
seemed  more  or  less  rolled  —  in  fact,  that  the 
natural  place  of  the  Stigmaria  was  in  the 
under  clay.  Then  Mr.  Binney  discovered  a 
tree  —  a  Sigillaria,  standing  upright  in  the 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


coal-measures  with  its  roots  attached.  Those 
roots  penetrated  into  the  under  clay  of  the 
coal ;  and  those  roots  were  Stigmarias.  That 
seems  to  have  settled  the  question.  The 
Sigillarias,  at  least,  had  grown  where  they 
were  found,  and  the  clay  beneath  the  coal- 
Leds  was  the  original  soil  on  which  they  had 
grown.  Just  so,  if  you  will  look  at  any  peat 
bog,  you  will  find  it  bottomed  by  clay,  which 
clay  is  pierced  everywhere  by  the  roots  of  the 
moss  forming  the  peat,  or  of  the  trees,  birches, 
alders,  poplars,  and  willows,  which  grow  in 
the  bog.  So  the  proof  seemed  complete,  that 
the  "coal  had  been  formed  out  of  vegetation 
growing  where  it  was  buried.  If  any  further 
proof  for  that  theory  was  needed,  it  would  be 
found  in  this  fact,  most  ingeniously  suggested 
by  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins.  The  resinous  spores, 
or  seeds  of  the  Lepidodendra  make  up — as 
said  above-  a  great  part  of  the  bituminous 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  137 

coal.  Now  those  spores  are  so  light,  that 
if  the  coal  had  been  laid  down  by  water, 
they  would  have  floated  on  it,  and  have 
been  carried  away ;  and  therefore  the  bitumi- 
nous coal  must  have  been  formed,  not  under 
water,  but  on  dry  land. 

I  have  dwelt  at  length  on  these  further 
arguments,  because  they  seem  to  me  as  pretty 
a  specimen  as  I  can  give  my  readers  of  that 
regular  and  gradual  induction,  that  common- 
sense  regulated,  by  which  geological  theories 
are  worked  out. 

But  how  does  this  theory  explain  the  per- 
fect purity  of  the  coal  ?  I  think  Sir  C.  Lyell 
answers  that  question  fully  in  p.  383  of  his 
"Student's  Elements  of  Geology."  He  tells 
us  that  the  dense  growths  of  reeds  and  herb- 
age which  encompass  the  margins  of  forest- 
covered  swamps  in  the  valley  and  delta  of 
the  Mississippi,  in  passing  through  them,  are 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


filtered  and  made  to  clear  themselves  entirely 
before  they  reach  the  areas  in  which  vege- 
table matter  may  accumulate  for  centuries, 
forming  coal  if  the  climate  be  favourable; 
and  that  in  the  cypress-swamps  of  that  region 
no  sediment  mingles  with  the  vegetable 
matter  accumulated  from  the  decay  of  trees 
and  semi-aquatic  plants;  so  that  when,  in  a 
very  dry  season,  the  swamp  is  set  on  fire, 
pits  are  burnt  into  the  ground  many  feet 
deep,  or  as  far  as  the  fire  can  go  down  with- 
out reaching  water,  and  scarcely  any  earthy 
residuum  is  left;  just  as  when  the  soil  of 
the  English  fens  catches  fire,  red-hot  holes 
are  eaten  down  through  pure  peat  till  the 
water-bearing  clay  below  is  reached.  But 
the  purity  of  the  water  in  peaty  lagoons  is 
observable  elsewhere  than  in  the  delta  of 
the  Mississippi.  What  can  be  more  trans- 
parent than  many  a  pool  surrounded  by 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  139 

quaking  bogs,  fringed,  as  they  are  in  Ireland, 
with  a  ring  of  white  water-lilies,  which  you 
dare  not  stoop  to  pick,  lest  the  peat,  bending 
inward,  slide  you  down  into  that  clear,  dark 
gulf  some  twenty  feet  in  depth,  bottomed  and 
walled  with  yielding  ooze,  from  which  there 
is  no  escape  r  Most  transparent,  likewise,  is 
the  water  of  the  West  Indian  swamps.  Though 
it  is  of  the  colour  of  coffee,  or  rather  of  dark 
beer,  and  so  impregnated  with  gases  that  it 
produces  fever  or  cholera  when  drunk,  yet  it 
is — at  least  when  it  does  not  mingle  with  vne 
salt  water — so  clear,  that  one  might  see  every 
marking  on  a  boa-constrictor  or  alligator,  if 
he  glided  along  the  bottom  under  the  canoe. 

But  now  comes  the  question — Even  if  all 
this  be  true,  how  were  the  forests  covered  up 
in  shale  and  sandstone,  one  after  another  ? 

By  gradual  sinking  of  the  land,  one  would 
suppose. 

13*  9 


140  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

If  we  find,  as  we  may  find  in  a  hun- 
dred coal-pits,  trees  rooted  as  they  grew, 
with  their  trunks  either  standing  up  through 
the  coal,  and  through  the  sandstones  above 
the  coal ;  their  bark  often  remaining  as  coal 
while  their  inside  is  filled  up  with  sandstone, 
has  not  our  common-sense  a  right  to  say — 
The  land  on  which  they  grew  sank  below  the 
water-line ;  the  trees  were  killed ;  and  the 
mud  and  sand  which  were  brought  down  the 
streams  enveloped  their  trunks  ?  As  for  the 
inside  being  full  of  sandstone,  have  we  not  all 
seen  hollow  trees  ?  Do  we  not  all  know  that 
when  a  tree  dies  its  wood  decays  first,  its 
bark  last  ?  It  is  so,  especially  in  the  Tropics. 
There  one  may  see  huge  dead  trees  with  their 
bark  seemingly  sound,  and  their  inside  a 
mere  cavern  with  touchwood  at  the  bottom  ; 
into  which  caverns  one  used  to  peep  with 
some  caution.  For  though  one  might  have 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  14! 

found  inside  only  a  pair  of  toucans,  or  parrots, 
or  a  whole  party  of  jolly  little  monkeys,  one 
was  quite  as  likely  to  find  a  poisonous  snake 
four  or  five  feet  long,  whose  bite  would  have 
very  certainly  prevented  me  having  the 
pleasure  of  writing  this  book. 

Now  is  it  not  plain  that  if  such  trees  as  that 
sunk,  their  bark  would  be  turned  into  lignite, 
and  at  last  into  coal,  while  their  insides 
would  be  silted  up  with  mud  and  sand  ? 
Thus  a  core  or  pillar  of  hard  sandstone 
would  be  formed,  which  might  do  to  the 
collier  of  the  future  what  they  are  too  apt  to 
do  now  in  the  Newcastle  and  Bristol  collieries. 
For  there,  when  the  coal  is  worked  out 
below,  the  sandstone  stems — "  coal-pipes  " 
as  the  colliers  call  them  —  in  the  roof  of 
the  seam,  having  no  branches,  and  no- 
thing to  hold  them  up  but  their  friable  bark 
of  coal,  are  but  too  apt  to  drop  out  sud- 


143  TOWN    GKOLOOY. 


denly,  killing  or  wounding  the  hapless  men 
below. 

Or  again,  if  we  find — as  we  very  often  find 
—as  was  found  at  Parkfield  Colliery,  near 
Wolverhampton,  in  the  year  1844 — a  quarter 
of  an  acre  of  coal-seam  filled  with  stumps  of 
trees  as  they  grew,  their  trunks  broken  off 
and  lying  in  every  direction,  turned  into  coal, 
and  flattened,  as  coal-fossils  so  often  are,  by 
the  weight  of  the  rock  above — should  we  not 
have  a  right  to  say — These  trees  were 
snapped  off  where  they  grew  by  some  violent 
convulsion ;  by  a  storm,  or  by  a  sudden  inrush 
of  water  owing  to  a' sudden  sinking  of  the  land, 
or  by  the  very  earthquake  shock  itself  which 
sank  the  land  ? 

But  what  evidence  have  we  of  such  sink- 
ings ?  The  plain  fact  that  you  have  coal- 
seam  above  coal-seam,  each  with  its  bed  of 
under-clay ;  and  that  therefore  the  land  must 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  143 

have  sunk  ere  the  next  bed  of  soil  could  have 
been  deposited,  and  the  next  forest  have 
grown  on  it. 

In  one  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  coal-fields 
there  are  more  than  thirty  seams  of  coal,  each 
with  its  under-clay  below  it.  What  can  that 
mean  but  thirty  or  more  subsidences  of  the 
land,  and  the  peat  of  thirty  or  more  forests  or 
peat-mosses,  one  above  the  other  ?  And  now 
if  any  reader  shall  say,  Subsidence  ?  What  is 
this'  quite  new  element  which  you  have 
brought  into  your  argument  ?  You  told  us 
that  you  would  reason  from  the  known  to  the 
unknown.  What  do  we  know  of  subsidence  ? 
You  offered  to  explain  the  thing  which  had 
gone  on  once  by  that  which  is  going  on  now. 
Where  is  subsidence  going  on  now  upon  the 
surface  of  our  planet  ?  And  where,  too, 
upheaval,  such  as  would  bring  us  these  buried 
forests  up  again  from  under  the  sea-level,  and 


144  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

make  them,  like  our  British  coal-field,  dry 
land  once  more  ? 

The  answer  is — Subsidence  and  elevation  of 
the  land  are  common  now,  probably  just  as 
common  as  they  were  in  any  age  of  this 
planet's  history. 

To  give  two  instances,  made  now  notorious 
by  the  writings  of  geologists.  As  lately  as  1819 
a  single  earthquake  shock  in  Cutch,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Indus,  sunk  a  tract  of  land  larger 
than  the  Lake  of  Geneva  in  some  places  to  a 
depth  of  eighteen  feet,  and  converted  it  into  an 
inland  sea.  The  same  shock  raised,  a  few  miles 
off,  a  corresponding  sheet  of  land  some  fifty 
miles  in  length,  and  in  some  parts  sixteen  miles 
broad,  ten  feet  above  the  level  of  the  alluvial 
plain,  and  left  it  to  be  named  by  the  country- 
people  the  "  Ullah  Bund,"  or  bank  of  God,  to 
distinguish  it  from  the  artificial  banks  in  the 
neigh  bourhood. 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  145 

Again :  in  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi — a 
tract  which  is  now,  it  would  seem,  in  much 
the  same  state  as  central  England  was  while 
our  coal-fields  were  being  laid  down — the 
earthquakes  of  181 1-12  caused  large  lakes  to 
appear  suddenly  in  many  parts  of  the  district, 
amid  the  dense  forests  of  cypress.  One  of 
these,  the  "  Sunk  Country,"  near  New  Madrid, 
is  between  seventy  and  eighty  miles  in  length, 
and  thirty  miles  in  breadth,  and  throughout 
it,  as  late  as  1846,  "dead  trees  were  con- 
spicuous, some  erect  in  the  water,  others 
fallen,  and  strewed  in  dense  masses  over  the 
bottom,  in  the  shallows,  and  near  the  shore." 
I  quote  these  words  from  Sir  Charles  Lyell's 
"' Principles  of  Geology"  (nth  edit.),  vol.  i. 
p.  453.  And  I  cannot  do  better  than  advise 
my  readers,  if  they  wish  to  know  more  of  the 
way  in  which  coal  was  formed,  to  read  what 
is  said  in  that  book  concerning  the  Delta 


146  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

of  the  Mississippi,  and  its  strata  of  forests 
sunk  where  they  grew,  and  in  some  places 
upraised '  again,  alternating  with  beds  of 
clay  and  sand,  vegetable  soil,  recent  sea- 
shells,  and  what  not,  forming,  to  a  depth  of 
several  hundred  feet,  just  such  a  mass  of 
beds  as  exists  in  our  own  coal-fields  at  this 
day. 

If,  therefore,  the  reader  wishes  to  picture  to 
himself  the  scenery  of  what  is  now  central 
England,  during  the  period  when  our  coal 
was  being  laid  down,  he  has  only,  I  believe, 
to  transport  himself  in  fancy  to  any  great 
alluvial  delta,  in  a  moist  and  warm  climate, 
favourable  to  the  growth  of  vegetation.  He 
has  only  to  conceive  wooded  marshes,  at  the 
mouth  of  great  rivers,  slowly  sinking  beneath 
the  sea;  the  forests  in  them  killed  by  the 
water,  and  then  covered  up  by  layers  of  sand, 
brought  down  from  inland,  till  that  new  layer 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE. 


became  dry  land,  to  carry  a  fresh  crop 
of  vegetation.  He  has  thus  all  that  he 
needs  to  explain  how  coal-measures  were 
formed.  I  myself  saw  once  a  scene  of  that 
kind,  which  I  should  be  sorry  to  forget  ;  for 
there  was,  as  I  conceived,  coal,  making  or 
getting  ready  to  be  made,  before  my  eyes  :  a 
sheet  of  swamp,  sinking  slowly  into  the  sea  ; 
for  there  stood  trees  still  rooted  below  high- 
water  mark,  and  killed  by  the  waves  ;  while 
inland  huge  trees  stood  dying,  or  dead,  from 
the  water  at  their  roots.  But  what  a  scene  — 
a  labyrinth  of  narrow  creeks,  so  narrow  that 
a  canoe  could  not  pass  up,  haunted  with 
alligators  and  boa-constrictors,  parrots  and 
white  herons,  amid  an  inextricable  confusion 
of  vegetable  mud,  roots  of  the  alder-like 
mangroves,  and  tangled  creepers  hanging 
from  tree  to  tree  ;  and  overhead  huge  fan- 
palms,  delighting  in  the  moisture,  mingled 


148  TOWN     GEOLOGY. 

with  still  huger  broad-leaved  trees  in  every 
stage  of  decay.  The  drowned  vegetable  soil 
of  ages  beneath  me ;  above  my  head,  for 
a  hundred  feet,  a  mass  of  stems  and  boughs, 
and  leaves  and  flowers,  compared  with  which 
the  richest  hothouse  in  England  was  poor  and 
small.  But  if  the  sinking  process  which  was 
going  on  continued  a  few  hundred  years,  all 
that  huge  mass  of  wood  and  leaf  would  be 
sunk  beneath  the  swamp,  and  covered  up 
in  mud  washed  down  from  the  mountains, 
and  sand  driven  in  from  the  sea;  to  form 
a  bed  many  feet  thick,  of  what  would  be  first 
peat,  then  lignite,  and  last,  it  may  be,  coal, 
with  the  stems  of  killed  trees  standing  up  out 
of  it  into  the  new  mud  and  sand-beds  above 
it,  just  as  the  Sigillarise  and  other  stems  stand 
up  in  the  coal-beds  both  of  Britain  and  of 
Nova  Scotia ;  while  over  it  a  fresh  forest  would 
grow  up,  to  suffer  the  same  fate — if  the 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  149 

sinking    process    went    on — as    that    which 
had  preceded  it. 

That  was  a  sight  not  easily  to  be  forgotten. 
But  we  need  not  have  gone  so  far  from 
home,  at  least,  a  few  hundred  years  ago,  to 
see  an  exactly  similar  one.  The  fens  of 
Norfolk  and  Cambridgeshire,  before  the 
rivers  were  embanked,  the  water  pumped  off, 
the  forests  felled,  and  the  reed-beds  ploughed 
up,  were  exactly  in  the  same  state.  The  vast 
deposits  of  peat  between  Cambridge  and  the 
sea,  often  filled  with  timber  trees,  either  fallen 
or  upright  as  they  grew,  and  often  mixed  with 
beds  of  sand  or  mud,  brought  down  in  floods, 
were  formed  in  exactly  the  same  way  ;  and  if 
they  had  remained  undrained,  then  that  slow 
sinking,  which  geologists  say  is  going  on  over 
the  whole  area  of  the  Fens,  would  have 
brought  them  gradually,  but  surely,  below  the 
sea-level,  to  be  covered  up  by  new  forests, 


150  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


and  converted  in  due  time  into  coal.  And 
future  geologists  would  have  found — they 
may  find  yet,  if,  which  God  forbid,  England 
should  become  barbarous  and  the  trees  be 
thrown  out  of  cultivation — instead  of  fossil 
Lepidodendra  and  Sigillariie,  Calamites  and 
ferns,  fossil  ashes  and  oaks,  alders  and 
poplars,  bulrushes  and  reeds.  Almost  the 
only  fossil  fern  would  have  been  that  tall  and 
beautiful  Lastrsea  Thelypteris,  once  so  abun- 
dant, now  all  but  destroyed  by  drainage 
and  the  plough. 

We  need  not,  therefore,  fancy  any  extra- 
ordinary state  of  things  on  this  planet  while 
our  English  coal  was  being  formed.  The 
climate  of  the  northern  hemisphere — Britain, 
at  least,  and  Nova  Scotia — was  warmer  than 
now,  to  judge  from  the  abundance  of  ferns ; 
and  especially  of  tree-ferns  ;  but  not  so  warm, 
to  judge  from  the  presence  of  conifers  (trees 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  '51 

of  the  pine  tribe),  as  the  Tropics.  Moreover, 
there  must  have  been,  it  seems  to  me,  a  great 
scarcity  of  animal  life.  Insects  are  found, 
beautifully  preserved ;  a  few  reptiles,  too,  and 
land-shells :  but  very  few.  And  where  are 
the  traces  of  such  a  swarming  life  as  would 
be  entombed  were  a  tropic  forest  now  sunk ; 
which  is  found  entombed  in  many  parts 
of  our  English  fens  ?  The  only  explanation 
which  I  can  offer  is  this — that  the  club-mosses, 
tree-ferns,  pines,  and  other  low-ranked  vege- 
tation of  the  coal  afforded  little  or  no  food  for 
animals,  as  the  same  families  of  plants  do  to 
this  day ;  and  if  creatures  can  get  nothing  to 
eat,  they  certainly  cannot  multiply  and  re- 
plenish the  earth.  But,  be  that  as  it  may, 
the  fact  that  coal  is  buried  forest  is  not 
affected. 

Meanwhile,   the   shape    and    arrangements 
of  sea  and  land  must  have  been  utterly  dif- 


152  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

ferent  from  what  they  are  now.  Where  was 
that  great  land,  off  which  great  rivers  ran  to 
deposit  our  coal  -  measures  in  their  deltas  ? 
It  has  been  supposed,  for  good  reasons,  that 
north-western  France,  Belgium,  Holland,  and 
Germany  were  then  under  the  sea  ;  that  Den- 
mark and  Norway  were  joined  to  Scotland  by 
a  continent,  a  tongue  of  which  ran  across  the 
centre  of  England,  and  into  Ireland,  dividing 
the  northern  and  southern  coal-fields.  But 
how  far  to  the  west  and  north  did  that  old 
continent  stretch  ?  Did  it,  as  it  almost  cer- 
tainly did  long  ages  afterwards,  join  Green- 
land and  North  America  with  Scotland  and 
Norway  ?  Were  the  northern  fields  of  Nova 
Scotia,  which  are  of  the  same  geological  age 
as  our  own,  and  containing  the  same  plants, 
laid  down  by  rivers  which  ran  off  the  same 
continent  as  ours  ?  Who  can  tell  now  ?  That 
old  land,  and  all  record  of  it,  save  what  these 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  153 

fragmentary  coal  -  measures  can  give,  are 
buried  in  the  dark  abyss  of  countless  ages  ; 
and  we  can  only  look  back  with  awe,  and 
comfort  ourselves  with  the  thought  —  Let 
Time  be  ever  so  vast,  yet  Time  is  not  Eter- 
nity. 

One  word  more.  If  my  readers  have 
granted  that  all  for  which  I  have  argued  is 
probable,  they  will  still  have  a  right  to  ask 
for  further  proof. 

They  will  be  justified  in  saying,  "  You  say 
that  coal  is  transformed  vegetable  matter; 
but  can  you  show  us  how  the  transformation 
takes  place  ?  Is  it  possible,  according  to 
known  natural  laws  ? " 

The  chemist  must  answer  that.  And  he 
tells  us  that  wood  can  become  lignite,  or 
wood-coal,  by  parting  with  its  oxygen,  in  the 
shape  of  carbonic  acid  gas,  or  choke-damp ; 
and  then  common,  or  bituminous  coal,  by 


154  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

parting  with  its  hydrogen,  chiefly  in  the  form 
of  carburetted  hydrogen — the  gas  with  which 
we  light  our  streets.  That  is  about  as  much 
as  the  unscientific  reader  need  know.  But 
it  is  a  fresh  corroboration  of  the  theory 
that  coal  has  been  once  vegetable  fibre,  for 
it  shows  how  vegetable  fibre  can,  by  the 
laws  of  nature,  become  coal.  And  it  cer- 
tainly helps  us  to  believe  that  a  thing  has 
been  done,  if  we  are  shown  that  it  can  be 
done.. 

This  fact  explains,  also,  why  in  mines  of 
wood-coal  carbonic  acid,  i.e.  choke-damp, 
alone  is  given  off.  For  in  the  wood-coal  a 
great  deal  of  the  hydrogen  still  remains. 
In  mines  of  true  coal,  not  only  is  choke- 
damp  given  off,  but  that  more  terrible  pest 
of  the  miners,  fire-damp,  or  explosive  car- 
buretted hydrogen  and  olefiant  gases.  Now 
the  occurrence  of  that  fire-damp  in  mines 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  155 

proves  that  changes  are  still  going  on  in  the 
coal :  that  it  is  getting  rid  of  its  hydrogen, 
and  so  progressing  toward  the  state  of  an- 
thracite or  culm — stone-coal,  as  it  is  some- 
times called.  In  the  Pennsylvanian  coal- 
fields some  of  the  coal  has  actually  done 
this,  under  the  disturbing  force  of  earthquakes; 
for  the  coal,  which  is  bituminous,  like  our 
common  coal,  to  the  westward  where  the 
strata  are  horizontal,  becomes  gradually  an- 
thracite as  it  is  tossed  and  torn  by  the  earth- 
quake faults  of  the  Alleghany  and  Appala- 
chian mountains. 

And  is  a  further  transformation  possible  ? 
Yes ;  and  more  than  one.  If  we  conceive 
the  anthracite  cleared  of  all  but  its  last  atoms 
of  oxygen,  hydrogen,  and  nitrogen,  till  it 
has  become  all  but  pure  carbon,  it  would 
become — as  it  has  become  in  certain  rocks  of 

immense  antiquity,  graphite— what  we   mis- 
U* 


156  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


call  blacklead.  And,  after  that,  it  might  go 
through  one  transformation  more,  and  that 
the  most  startling  of  all.  It  would  need 
only  perfect  purification  and  crystallisation 
to  become — a  diamond ;  nothing  less.  We 
may  consider  the  coal  upon  the  fire  as  the 
middle  term  of  a  series,  of  which  the  first 
is  live  wood,  and  the  last  diamond ;  and 
indulge  safely  in  the  fancy  that  every  dia- 
mond in  the  world  has  probably,  at  some 
remote  epoch,  formed  part  of  a  growing 
plant. 

A  strange  transformation ;  which  will  look 
to  us  more  strange,  more  truly  poetical,  the 
more  steadily  we  consider  it. 

The  coal  on  the  fire ;  the"  table  at  which  I 
write — what  are  they  made  of  ?  Gas  and 
sunbeams ;  with  a  small  percentage  of  ash, 
or  earthy  salts,  which  need  hardly  be  taken 
into  account. 


THE    COAL    IN    THE    FIRE.  157 

Gas  and  sunbeams.     Strange,  but  true. 

The  life  of  the  growing  plant — and  what 
that  life  is  who  can  tell  ? — laid  hold  of  the 
gases  in  the  air  and  in  the  soil ;  of  the  car- 
bonic acid,  the  atmospheric  air,  the  water, 
for  that  too  is  gas.  It  drank  them  in  through 
its  rootlets :  it  breathed  them  in  through  its 
leaf-pores,  that  it  might  distil  them  into  sap, 
and  bud,  and  leaf,  and  wood.  But  it  had  to 
take  in  another  element,  without  which  the 
distillation  and  the  shaping  could  never  have 
taken  place.  It  had  to  drink  in  the  sunbeams 
— that  mysterious  and  complex  force  which 
is  for  ever  pouring  from  the  sun,  and  making 
itself  partly  palpable  to  our  senses  as  heat 
and  light.  So  the  life  of  the  plant  seized  the 
sunbeams,  and  absorbed  them,  buried  them  in 
itself — no  longer  as  light  and  heat,  but  as 
invisible  chemical  force,  locked  up  for  ages  in 
that  woody  fibre. 


TOWN    GFOLOGY. 


So  it  is.    Lord  Lytton  told  us  long  ago,  in  a 
beautiful  song,  how 

««  The  Wind  and  the  Beam  loved  the  Rose." 

But  Nature's  poetry  was  more  beautiful  than 
man's.  The  wind  and  the  beam  loved  the 
rose  so  well  that  they  made  the  rose  —  or 
rather,  the  rose  took  the  wind  and  the  beam, 
and  built  up  out  of  them,  by  her  own  inner 
life,,  her  exquisite  texture,  hue,  and  fragrance. 
What  next  ?  The  rose  dies  ;  the  timber 
tree  dies;  decays  down  into  vegetable  fibre, 
is  buried,  and  turned  to  coal:  but  the  plant 
cannot  altogether  undo  its  own  work.  Even 
in  death  and  decay  it  cannot  set  free  the  sun- 
beams imprisoned  in  its  tissue.  The  sun- 
force  must  stay,  shut  up  age  after  age,  invisible, 
but  strong  ;  working  at  its  own  prison-cells  ; 
transmuting  them,  or  making  them  capable 
ot  being  transmuted  by  man,  into  the  mani- 


THE     COAL    IN     THE     f'lRE.  159 

fold  products  of  coal — coke,  petroleum,  mine- 
ral pitch,  gases,  coal-tar,  benzole,  delicate 
aniline  dyes,  and  what  not,  till  its  day  of 
deliverance  comes. 

Man  digs  it,  throws  it  on  the  fire,  a  black, 
dead-seeming  lump.  A  corner,  an  atom  of  it, 
warms  till  it  reaches  the  igniting  point ;  the 
temperature  at  which  it  is  able  to  combine 
with  oxygen. 

And  then,  like  a  dormant  live  thing,  awak- 
ing after  ages  to  the  sense  of  its  own  powers, 
its  own  needs,  the  whole  lump  is  seized, 
atom  after  atom,  with  an  infectious  hunger 
for  that  oxygen  which  it  lost  centuries  since 
in  the  bottom  of  the  earth.  It  drinks  the 
oxygen  in  at  every  pore  ;  and  burns. 

And  so  the  spell  of  ages  is  broken.  The 
sun-force  bursts  its  prison-cells,  and  blazes 
into  the  free  atmosphere,  as  lignt  and  heat 
once  more;  returning  in  a  moment  into  the 


l6o  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


same  forms  in  which  it  entered  the  growing 
leaf  a  thousand  centuries  since. 

Strange  it  all  is,  yet  true.  But  of  nature,  as 
of  the  heart  of  man,  the  old  saying  stands— 
that  truth  is  stranger  than  fiction. 


V. 

THE  LIME  IN  THE  MORTAR. 

f    SHALL  presume  in  all  my  readers  some 
slight   knowledge   about   lime.      I   shall 
take   for  granted,   for  instance,   that   all  are 
better  informed  than  a  certain  party  of  Aus- 
tralian black  fellows  were  a  few  years  since. 

In  prowling  on  the  track  of  a  party  of 
English  settlers,  to  see  what  they  could  pick 
up,  they  came— oh,  joy ! — on  a  sack  of  flour, 
dropped  and  left  behind  in  the  bush  at  a 
certain  creek.  The  poor  savages  had  not 
had  such  a  prospect  of  a  good  meal  for  many 
a  day.  With  endless  jabbering  and  dancing, 
xhe  whole  tribe  gathered  round  the  precious 
flour-bag  with  all  the  pannikins,  gourds,  and. 


102  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

other  hollow  articles  it  could  muster,  eacli 
of  course  with  a  due  quantity  of  water  from 
the  creek  therein,  and  the  chief  began  dealing 
out  the  flour  by  handfuls,  beginning  of  course 
with  the  boldest  warriors.  But,  horror  of 
horrors,  each  man's  porridge  swelled  before 
his  eyes,  grew  hot,  smoked,  boiled  over.  They 
turned  and  fled,  man,  woman,  and  child,  from 
before  that  supernatural  prodigy ;  and  the 
settlers  coming  back  to  look  for  the  dropped 
sack,  saw  a  sight  which  told  the  whole  tale. 
For  the  poor  creatures,  in  their  terror,  had 
thrown  away  their  pans  and  calabashes, 
each  filled  with  that  which  it  was  likely  to 
contain,  seeing  that  the  sack  itself  had  con- 
tained, not  flour,  but  quick-lime.  In  memory 
of  which  comi-tragedy,  that  creek  is  called  to 
this  day,  "  Flour-bag  Creek." 

Now  I  take  for  granted  that  you  are  all 
more  learned  than  these  blacks  fellows,  and 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  163 

know  quick-lime  from  flour.  But  still  you  are 
not  bound  to  know  what  quick-lime  is.  Let 
me  explain  it  to  you. 

Lime,  properly  speaking,  is  a  metal,  which 
goes  among  chemists  by  the  name  of  calcium. 
But  it  is  formed,  as  you  all  know,  in  the 
earth,  not  as  a  metal,  but  as  a  stone,  as  chalk 
or  limestone,  which  is  a  carbonate  of  lime  ; 
that  is,  calcium  combined  with  oxygen  and 
carbonic  acid  gases. 

In  that  state  it  will  make,  if  it  is  crystalline 
and  hard,  excellent  building  stone.  The 
finest  white  marble,  like  that  of  Carrara,  in 
Italy,  of  which  the  most  delicate  statues  are 
carved,  is  carbonate  of  lime  altered  and 
hardened  by  volcanic  heat.  But  to  make 
mortar  of  it,  it  must  be  softened  and  then 
brought  into  a  state  in  which  it  can  be  hard- 
ened again ;  and  ages  since,  some  man  or 
ot/ier,  who  deserves  to  rank  as  one  of  the 

10 


164  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

great  inventors,  one  of  the  great  benefactors 
of  his  race,  discovered  the  art  of  making  lime 
soft  and  hard  again ;  in  fact  of  making  mortar. 
The  discovery  was  probably  very  ancient; 
and  made,  probably  like  most  of  the  old  dis- 
coveries, in  the  East,  spreading  westward 
gradually.  The  earlier  Greek  buildings  are 
Cyclopean,  that  is,  of  stone  fitted  together 
without  mortar.  The  earlier  Egyptian  build- 
ings, though  the  stones  are  exquisitely  squared 
and  polished,  are  put  together  likewise  with- 
out mortar.  So,  long  ages  after,  were  the 
earlier  Roman  buildings,  and  even  some  of 
the  later.  The  famous  aqueduct  of  the  Pont 
du  Gard,  near  Nismes,  in  the  south  of  France, 
has,  if  I  recollect  right,  no  mortar  whatever 
in  it.  The  stones  of  its  noble  double  tier  of 
circular  arches  have  been  dropped  into  their 
places  upon  the  wooden  centres,  and  stand 
unmoved  to  this  day,  simply  by  the  jamming 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  165 

of  their  own  weight ;  a  miracle  of  art.  But 
the  fact  is  puzzling ;  for  these  Romans  were 
the  best  mortar-makers  of  the  world.  We 
cannot,  I  believe,  surpass  them  in  the  art  even 
now;  and  in  some  of  their  old  castles,  the 
mortar  is  actually  to  this  day  harder  and 
tougher  than  the  stones  which  it  holds  to- 
gether. And  they  had  plenty  of  lime  at  hand 
if  they  had  chosen  to  make  mortar.  The  Pont 
du  Gard  crosses  a  limestone  ravine,  and  is 
itself  built  of  limestone.  But  I  presume  the 
cunning  Romans  would  not  trust  mortar 
made  from  that  coarse  Nummulite  limestone, 

filled  with   gritty   sand,  and   preferred,  with 
ex 

their  usual  carefulness,  no   mortar  at  all  to 

bad. 

But  I  must  return,  and  tell  my  readers,  in  a 
few  words,  the  chemical  history  of  mortar. 
If  limestone  be  burnt,  or  rather  roasted,  in  a 
kiln,  the  carbonic  acid  is  given  off — as  you 


l66  TOWN    GEOLOGY 

may  discover  by  your  own  nose ;  as  many  a 
poor  tramp  has  discovered  too  late,  when,  on 
a  cold  winter  night,  he  has  laid  down  by  the 
side  of  the  burning  kiln  to  keep  himself  warm, 
and  woke  in  the  other  world,  stifled  to  death 
by  the  poisonous  fumes. 

The  lime  then  gives  off  its  carbonic  acid, 
and  also  its  water  of  crystallization,  that  is, 
water  which  it  holds  (as  do  many  rocks) 
locked  up  in  it  unseen,  and  only  to  be  dis- 
covered by  chemical  analysis.  It  is  then 
anhydrous — that  is,  waterless — oxide  of  lime, 
what  we  call  quick-lime ;  that  which  figured 
in  the  comi-tragedy  of  "  Flour-bag  Creek ;  " 
and  then,  as  you  may  find  if  you  get  it  under 
your  nails  or  into  your  eyes,  will  burn  and 
blister  like  an  acid. 

This  has  to  be  turned  again  into  a  hard 
and  tough  artificial  limestone,  in  plain  words, 
into  mortar :  and  the  first  step  is  to  slack  it— 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  167 

that  is,  to  give  it  back  the  water  which  it  has 
lost,  and  for  which  it  is  as  it  were  thirsting. 
So  it  is  slacked  with  water,  which  it  drinks 
in,  heating  itself  and  the  water  till  it  steams 
and  swells  in  bulk,  because  it  takes  the  sub- 
stance of  the  water  into  its  own  substance. 
Slacked  lime,  as  we  all  know,  is  not  visibly 
wetter  than  quick-lime ;  it  crumbles  to  a  dry 
white  powder  in  spite  of  all  the  water  which 
it  contains. 

Then  it  must  be  made  to  set,  that  is,  to 
return  to  limestone,  to  carbonate  of  lime,  by 
drinking  in  the  carbonic  acid  from  water  and 
air,  which  some  sorts  of  lime  will  do  instantly, 
setting  at  once,  and  being  therefore  used  as 
cements.  But  the  lime  usually  employed 
must  be  mixed  with  more  or  less  sand  to 
make  it  set  hard :  a  mysterious  process,  of 
which  it  will  be  enough  to  tell  the  reader  that 
die  sand  and  lime  are  said  to  unite  gradually, 


l68  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


not  only  mechanically — that  is,  by  sticking 
together ;  but  also  in  part  chemically — that  is, 
by  forming  out  of  themselves  a  new  substance, 
which  is  called  silicate  of  lime. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  mortar  paste  has 
now  to  do  two  things  ;  first  to  dry,  and  next  to 
take  up  carbonic  acid  from  the  air  and  water, 
enough  to  harden  it  again  into  limestone :  and 
that  it  will  take  some  time  in  doing.  A  thick 
wall,  I  am  informed,  requires  several  years 
before  it  is  set  throughout,  and  has  acquired  its 
full  hardness,  or  rather  toughness ;  and  good 
mortar,  as  is  well  known,  will  acquire  ex- 
treme hardness  with  age,  probably  from  the 
very  same  cause  that  it  did  when  it  was 
limestone  in  the  earth.  For,  as  a  general 
rule,  the  more  ancient  the  strata  is  in  which 
the  limestone  is  found,  the  harder  the  lime- 
stone is ;  except  in  cases  where  volcanic 
action  and  earthquake  pressure  have  hard- 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  169 

ened  limestone  in  more  recent  strata,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  white  marbles  of  Carrara 
in  Italy,  which  are  of  the  age  of  our 
Oolites,  that  is,  of  the  freestone  of  Bath, 
&c.,  hardened  by  the  heat  of  intruded  volcanic 
rocks. 

But  now :  what  is  the  limestone  ?  and  how 
did  it  get  where  it  is — not  into  the  mortar,  I 
mean,  but  into  the  limestone  quarry  r  Let  me 
tell  you,  or  rather,  help  me  to  tell  yourselves, 
by  leading  you,  as  before,  from  the  known  to 
the  unknown.  Let  me  lead  you  to  places 
unknown  indeed  to  most ;  but  there  may  be 
sailors  or  soldiers  among  my  readers  who 
know  them  far  better  than  I  do.  Let  me 
lead  you,  in  fancy,  to  some  island  in  the 
Tropic  seas.  After  all,  I  am  not  leading  you 
as  far  away  as  you  fancy  by  several  thousand 
miles,  as  you  will  see,  I  trust,  ere  I  have  done. 

Let  me   take  you  to   some  island  :    what 


170  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

shall  it  be  like?  Shall  it  be  a  high  island, 
with  cliff  piled  on  cliff,  and  peak  on  peak,  all 
rich  with  mighty  forests,  like  a  furred  mantle 
of  green  velvet,  mounting  up  and  up  till  it  is 
lost  among  white  clouds  above  r  Or  shall  it 
be  a  mere  low  reef,  which  you  do  not  see  till 
you  are  close  upon  it ;  on  which  nothing  rises 
above  the  water,  but  here  and  there  a  knot  of 
coco-nut  palms  or  a  block  of  stone,  or  a  few 
bushes,  swarming  with  innumerable  sea- 
fowl  and  their  eggs  ?  Let  it  be  which  you 
will :  both  are  strange  enough  ;  both  beautiful ; 
both  will  tell  us  a  story. 

The  ship  will  have  to  lie-to,  and  anchor  if 
she  can ;  it  may  be  a  mile,  it  may  be  only  a 
few  yards,  from  the  land.  For  between  it 
and  the  land  will  be  a  line  of  breakers, 
raging  in  before  the  warm  trade-wind.  And 
this,  you  will  be  told,  marks  the  edge  of  the 
coral  reef. 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  171 

You  will  have  to  go  ashore  in  a  boat,  over  a 
sea  which  looks  unfathomable,  and  which  may 
be  a  mile  or  more  in  depth,  and  search  for  an 
opening  in  the  reef,  through  which  the  boat 
can  pass  without  being  knocked  to  pieces. 

You  find  one :  and  in  a  moment,  what  a 
change.  The  deep  has  suddenly  become 
shallow;  the  blue  white,  from  the  gleam  of 
the  white  coral  at  the  bottom.  But  the  coral 
is  not  all  white,  only  indeed  a  little  of  it; 
for  as  you  look  down  through  the  clear  water, 
you  find  that  the  coral  is  starred  with  innu- 
merable live  flowers,  blue,  crimson,  grey,  every 
conceivable  hue ;  and  that  these  are  the  coral 
polypes,  each  with  its  ring  of  arms  thrust  out 
of  its  cell,  who  are  building  up  their  common 
habitations  of  lime.  If  you  want  to  under- 
stand, by  a  rough  but  correct  description, 
what  a  coral  polype  is  :  all  who  have  been  to 
the  sea-side  know,  or  at  least  have  heard  of, 

15* 


172  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

sea-anemones.  Now  coral  polypes  are  sea- 
anemones,  which  make  each  a  shell  of  lime, 
growing  with  its  growth.  As  for  their  shapes, 
the  variety  of  them,  the  beauty  of  them,  no 
tongue  can  describe  them.  If  you  want  to 
see  them,  go  to  the  Coral  Rooms  of  the 
British  or  Liverpool  Museums,  and  judge  for 
yourselves.  Only  remember  that  you  must 
re-clothe  each  of  those  exquisite  forms  with  a 
coating  of  live  jelly  of  some  delicate  hue, 
and  put  back  into  every  one  of  the  thousand 
cells  its  living  flower;  and  into  the  beds,  or 
rather  banks,  of  the  salt-water  flower  garden, 
the  gaudiest  of  shell-less  sea-anemones,  such 
as  we  have  on  our  coasts,  rooted  in  the  cracks, 
and  live  shells  and  sea-slugs,  as  gaudy  as 
they,  crawling  about,  with  fifty  other  forms  of 
fantastic  and  exuberant  life.  You  must  not 
overlook,  too,  the  fish,  especially  the  parrot- 
fish,  some  of  them  of  tne  gaudiest  colours, 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  173 

who  spend  their  lives  in  browsing  on  the  live 
coral,  with  strong  clipping  and  grinding  teeth, 
just  as  a  cow  browses  the  grass,  keeping  the 
animal  matter,  and  throwing  away  the  lime 
in  the  form  of  an  impalpable  white  mud, 
which  fills  up  the  interstices  in  the  coral 
beds. 

The  bottom,  just  outside  the  reef,  is 
covered  with  that  mud,  mixed  with  more 
lime-mud,  which  the  surge  wears  off  the  reef; 
and  if  you  have,  as  you  should  have,  a  dredge 
on  board,  and  try  a  haul  of  that  mud  as 
you  row  home,  you  may  find,  but  not  always, 
animal  forms  rooted  in  it,  which  will  delight 
the  soul  of  a  scientific  man.  One,  I  hope, 
would  be  some  sort  of  Terebratula,  or  shell 
akin  to  it.  You  would  probably  think  it 
a  cockle :  but  you  would  be  wrong.  The 
animal  which  dwells  in  it  has  about  the 
same  relationship  to  a  cockle  as  a  dog  has 


174  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

to  a  bird.  It  is  a  Brachiopod ;  a  family 
with  which  the  ancient  seas  once  swarmed, 
but  which  is  rare  now,  all  over  the  world, 
having  been  supplanted  and  driven  out  of  the 
seas  by  newer  and  stronger  forms  of  shelled 
animals.  The  nearest  spot  at  which  you  are 
likely  to  dredge  a  live  Brachiopod  will  be  in 
the  deep  water  of  Loch  Fyne,  in  Argyleshire, 
where  two  species  still  linger,  fastened, 
strangely  enough,  to  the  smooth  pebbles  of  a 
submerged  glacier,  formed  in  the  open  air 
during  the  age  of  ice,  but  sunk  now  to  a 
depth  of  eighty  fathoms.  The  first  time  I 
saw  those  shells  come  up  in  the  dredge  out 
of  the  dark  and  motionless  abyss,  I  could 
sympathise  with  those  feelings  of  mingled 
delight  and  awe  which,  so  my  companion 
told  me,  the  great  Professor  Owen  had  in  the 
same  spot  first  beheld  the  same  lingering 
remnants  of  a  primaeval  world. 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  175 

The  other  might  be  (but  I  cannot  pro- 
mise you  even  a  chance  of  dredging  that, 
unless  you  were  off  the  coast  of  Portugal, 
or  the  windward  side  of  some  of  the  West 
India  Islands)  a  live  Crinoid ;  an  exquisite 
starfish,  with  long  and  branching  arms,  but 
rooted  in  the  mud  by  a  long  stalk,  and  that 
stalk  throwing  out  barren  side  branches ;  the 
whole  a  living  plant  of  stone.  You  may  see 
in  museums  specimens  of  this  family,  now  so 
rare,  all  but  extinct.  And  yet  fifty  or  a 
hundred  different  forms  of  the  same  type 
swarmed  in  the  ancient  seas  :  whole  masses 
of  limestone  are  made  up  of  little  else  but  the 
fragments  of  such  animals. 

But  we  have  not  landed  yet  on  the  dry- 
part  of  the  reef.  Let  us  make  for  it,  taking 
care  meanwhile  that  we  do  not  get  our  feet 
cut  by  the  coral,  or  stung  as  by  nettles  by 
the  coral  insects.  We  shall  see  that  the  dry 


176  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

land  is  made  up  entirely  of  coral,  ground  and 
broken  by  the  waves,  and  hurled  inland  by 
the  storm,  sometimes  in  huge  boulders,  mostly 
as  fine  mud  ;  and  that,  under  the  influence  of 
the  sun  and  of  the  rain,  which  filters  through 
it,  charged  with  lime  from  the  rotting  coral, 
the  whole  is  setting,  as  cement  sets,  into  rock. 
And  what  is  this  ?  A  long  bank  of  stone 
standing  up  as  a  low  cliff,  ten  or  twelve  feet 
above  high-water  mark.  It  is  full  of  frag- 
ments of  shell,  of  fragments  of  coral,  of  all 
sorts  of  animal  remains  ;  and  the  lower  part  of 
it  is  quite  hard  rock.  Moreover,  it  is  bedded 
in  regular  layers,  just  such  as  you  see  in 
a  quarry.  But  how  did  it  get  there?  It 
must  have  been  formed  at  the  sea-level,  some 
of  it,  indeed,  under  the  sea;  for  here  are 
great  masses  of  madrepore  and  limestone 
corals  imbedded  just  as  they  grew.  What 
lifted  it  up  ?  Your  companions,  if  you  have 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  177 

any  who  know  the  island,  have  no  difficulty 
in  telling  you.  It  was  hove  up,  they  say, 
in  the  earthquake  in  such  and  such  a  year: 
and  they  will  tell  you,  perhaps,  that  if  you 
will  go  on  shore  to  the  main  island  which 
rises  inside  the  reef,  you  may  see  dead  coral 
beds  just  like  these  lying  on  the  old  rocks, 
and  sloping  up  along  the  flanks  of  the  moun- 
tains to  several  hundred  feet  above  the  sea. 
I  have  seen  such  many  a  time. 

Thus  you  find  the  coral  being  converted 
gradually  into  a  limestone  rock,  either  fine 
and  homogeneous,  composed  of  coral  grown 
into  pulp,  or  filled  with  corals  and  shells, 
or  with  angular  fragments  of  older  coral 
rock.  Did  you  never  see  that  last  ?  No  ? 
Yes,  you  have  a  hundred  times.  You  have 
but  to  look  at  the  marbles  commonly  used 
about  these  islands,  with  angular  fragments 
imbedded  in  the  mass,  and  here  and  there  a 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


shell,  the  whole  cemented  together  by  water 
holding  in  solution  carbonate  of  lime,  and 
there  see  the  very  same  phenomenon  per- 
petuated to  this  day. 

Thus,  I  think,  we  have  got  first  from  the 
known  to  the  unknown  ;  from  a  tropic 
coral  island  back  here  to  the  limestone  hills 
of  these  islands  ;  and  I  did  not  speak  at 
random  when  I  said,  that  I  was  not  leading 
you  away  as  far  as  you  fancied  by  several 
thousand  miles. 

Examine  any  average  limestone  quarry 
from  Bristol  to  Berwick,  and  you  will  see 
there  all  that  I  have  been  describing;  that 
is,  all  of  it  which  is  not  soft  animal  matter, 
certain  to  decay.  You  will  see  the  lime-mud 
hardened  into  rock  beds  ;  you  will  see  the 
shells  embedded  in  it;  you  will  see  the 
corals  in  every  stage  of  destruction  ;  you 
will  see  whole  layers  made  up  of  innumerable 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  179 

fragments  of  Crinoids — no  wonder  they  are 
innumerable,  for,  it  has  been  calculated, 
there  are  in  a  single  animal  of  some  of  the 
species  140,000  joints — 140,000  bits  of  lime 
to  fall  apart  when  its  soft  parts  decay.  But 
is  it  not  all  there  ?  And  why  should  it 
not  have  got  there  by  the  same  process  by 
which  similar  old  coral  beds  get  up  the 
mouatain  sides  in  the  West  Indies  and  else- 
where ;  namely,  by  the  upheaving  force  of 
earthquakes  ?  When  you  see  similar  effects, 
you  have  a  right  to  presume  similar  causes. 
-  If  you  see  a  man  fall  off  a  house  here,  and 
break  his  neck ;  and  some  years  after,  in 
London  or  New  York,  or  anywhere  else, 
find  another  man  lying  at  the  foot  of  anothei 
house,  with  his  neck  broken  in  the  same  way, 
is  it  not  a  very  fair  presumption  that  he  has 
fallen  off  a  house  likewise  ? 

You  may  be  wrong.     He  may  have  come 


180  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

to  his  end  by  a  dozen  other  means :  but 
you  must  have  proof  of  that.  You  will  have 
a  full  right,  in  science  and  in  common  sense, 
to  say — That  man  fell  off  the  house,  till  some 
one  proves  to  you  that  he  did  not. 

In  fact,  there  is  nothing  which  you  see  in 
the  limestones  of  these  isles — save  and  except 
the  difference  in  every  shell  and  coral — which 
you  would  not  see  in  the  coral  beds  of  the 
West  Indies,  if  such  earthquakes  as  that 
famous  one  at  St.  Thomas's,  in  1866,  became 
common  and  periodic,  upheaving  the  land 
(they  needs  upheave  it  a  very  little,  only  two 
hundred  and  fifty  feet),  till  St.  Thomas's, 
and  all .  the  Virgin  Isles,  and  the  mighty 
mountain  of  Porto  Rico,  which  looms  up  dim 
and  purple  to  the  west,  were  all  joined  into 
dry  land  once  more,  and  the  lonely  coral- 
shoal  of  Anegada  were  raised,  as  it  would  be 
raised  then,  into  a  limestone  table-land,  like 


THE     LIME     IN     THE     MORTAR.  l8l 

that  of  Central  Ireland,  of  Galvvay,  or  of 
County  Clare. 

But  you  must  clearly  understand,  that  how- 
ever much  these  coralline  limestones  have 
been  upheaved  since  they  were  formed,  yet 
the  sea-bottom,  while  they  were  being  formed, 
was  sinking  and  not  rising.  This  is  a  fact 
which  was  first  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Darwin, 
from  the  observations  which  he  made  in  the 
world-famous  Voyage  of  the  Beagle  ;  and  the 
observations  of  subsequent  great  naturalists 
have  all  gone  to  corroborate  his  theory. 

It  was  supposed  at  first,  you  must  under- 
stand, that  when  a  coral  island  rose  steeply 
to  the  surface  of  the  sea  out  of  blue  water, 
perhaps  a  thousand  fathoms  or  more,  that 
fact  was  plain  proof  that  the  little  coral 
polypes  had  begun  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea,  and,  in  the  course  of  ages,  built  up  the 
whole  island  an  enormous  depth. 


r8a  TOWN  GEOLOGY. 

But  it  soon  came  out  that  that  theory  was 
not  correct ;  for  the  coral  polypes  cannot  live 
and  build  save  in  shallow  water — say  in  thirty 
to  forty  fathoms.  Indeed,  some  of  the  strongest 
and  largest  species  work  best  at  the  very 
surface,  and  in  the  cut  of  the  fiercest  surf. 
And  so  arose  a  puzzle  as  to  how  coral  rock 
is  often  found  of  vast  thickness,  which  Mr. 
Darwin  explained.  His  theory  was,  and 
there  is  no  doubt  now  that  it  is  correct, 
that  in  these  cases  the  sea-bottom  is  sinking ; 
that  as  it  sinks,  carrying  the  coral  beds 
down  with  it,  the  coral  dies,  and  a  fresh 
live  crop  of  polypes  builds  on  the  top  of  the 
houses  of  their  dead  ancestors  ;  so  that,  as  the 
depression  goes  on,  generation  after  genera- 
tion builds  upwards,  the  living  on  the  dead, 
keeping  the  upper  surface  of  the  reef  at  the 
same  level,  while  its  base  is  sinking  down- 
ward into  the  abyss. 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  183 

By  applying  this  theory  to  the  coral  reef 
of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  the  following  interesting 
facts  were  made  out : — 

That  where  you  find  an  island  rising  out  of 
deep  water,  with  a  ring  of  coral  round  it,  a 
little  way  from  the  shore, — or,  as  in  Eastern 
Australia,  a  coast  with  a  fringing  reef  (the 
Flinders  reef  of  Australia  is  eleven  thousand 
miles  long) — that  is  a  pretty  sure  sign  that 
that  shore,  or  mountain,  is  sinking  slowly 
beneath  the  sea.  That  where  you  find,  as 
you  often  do  in  the  Pacific,  a  mere  atoll, 
or  circular  reef  of  coral,  with  a  shallow  pond 
of  smooth  water  in  the  centre,  and  deep  sea 
round,  that  is  a  pretty  sure  sign  that  the 
mountain-top  has  sunk  completely  into  the 
sea,  and  that  the  corals  are  going  on  building 
where  its  peak  once  was. 

And  more.  On  working  out  the  geography 
of  the  South-Sea  Islands  by  the  light  of  this 


184  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

theory  of  Mr.  Darwin's,  the  following  extra- 
ordinary fact  has  been  discovered  : — 

That  over  a  great  part  of  the  Pacific  Ocean 
sinking  is  going  on,  and  has  been  going  on 
for  ages  ;  and  that  the  greater  number  of  the 
beautiful  and  precious  South-Sea  Islands  are 
only  the  remnants  of  a  vast  continent  or 
archipelago,  which  once  stretched  for  thou- 
sands of  miles  between  Australia  and  South 
America. 

Now,  applying  the  same  theory  to  lime- 
stone beds,  which  are,  as  you  know,  only 
fossil  coral  reefs,  we  have  a  right  to  say, 
when  we  see  in  England,  Scotland,  Ireland, 
limestones  several  thousand  feet  thick,  that 
while  they  were  being  laid  down  as  coral  reef, 
the  sea-bottom,  and  probably  the  neighbouring 
land,  must  have  been  sinking  to  the  amount 
of  their  thickness — to  several  thousand  feet — 
before  that  later  sinking  which  enabled  several 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  185 

hundred  feet  of  millstone  grit  to  be  laid  down 
on  the  top  of  the  limestone. 

This  millstone  grit  is  a  new  and  a  very 
remarkable  element  in  our  strange  story. 
From  Derby  to  Northumberland  it  forms  vast 
and  lofty  moors,  capping,  as  at  Whernside 
and  Penygent,  the  highest  limestone  hills 
with  its  hard,  rough,  barren,  and  unfossili- 
ferous  strata.  Wherever  it  is  found,  it 
lies  on  the  top  of  the  "mountain,"  or 
carboniferous  limestone.  Almost  everywhere, 
where  coal  is  found  in  England,  it  lies  on 
the  millstone  grit.  I  speak  roughly,  for 
fear  of  confusing  my  readers  with  details. 
The  three  deposits  pass  more  or  less,  in  many 
places,  into  each  other:  but  always  in  the 
order  of  mountain  limestone  below,  millstone 
grit  on  it,  and  coal  on  that  again 

Now  what  does  its  presence  prove  ?  What 
but  this  r  That  after  the  great  coral  reefs 


l86  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

which  spread  over  Somersetshire  and  South 
Wales,  around  the  present  estuary  of  the 
Severn, — and  those,  once  perhaps  joined  to 
them,  which  spread  from  Derby  to  Berwick, 
with  a  western  branch  through  North-east 
Wales, — were  laid  down — after  all  this,  I  say, 
some  change  took  place  in  the  sea-bottom, 
and  brought  down  on  the  reefs  of  coral  sheets 
of  sand,  which  killed  the  corals  and  buried 
them  in  grit.  Does  any  reader  wish  for  proof 
of  this  ?  Let  him  examine  the  "  cherty,"  or 
flinty,  beds  which  so  often  appear  where  the 
bottom  of  the  millstone  grit  is  passing  into 
the  top  of  the  mountain  limestone — the  beds, 
to  give  an  instance,  which  are  now  quarried 
on  the  top  of  the  Halkin  Mountain  in  Flint- 
shire, for  chert,  which  is  sent  to  Staffordshire 
to  be  ground  down  for  the  manufacture  of 
China.  He  will  find  layers  in  those  beds,  of 
several  feet  in  thickness,  as  hard  as  flint, 


THE    LIME    IN    THE    MORTAR.  187 

but  as  porous  as  sponge.  On  examining 
their  cavities  he  will  find  them  to  be  simply 
hollow  casts  of  innumerable  joints  of  Crinoids, 
so  exquisitely  preserved,  even  to  their  most 
delicate  markings,  that  it  is  plain  they  were 
never  washed  about  upon  a  beach,  but  have 
grown  where,  or  nearly  where,  they  lie. 
What  then,  has  happened  to  them  ?  They 
have  been  killed  by  the  sand.  The  soft  parts 
of  the  animals  have  decayed,  letting  the 
140,000  joints  (more  or  less)  belonging  to 
each  animal  fall  into  a  heap,  and  be  imbedded 
in  the  growing  sand-rock ;  and  then,  it  may 
be  long  years  after,  water  filtering  through 
the  porous  sand  has  removed  the  lime  of 
which  the  joints  were  made,  and  left  their 
perfect  casts  behind. 

So  much  for  the  millstone  grits.  How  long 
the  deposition  of  sand  went  on,  how  long 
after  it  that  second  deposition  of  sands  took 

16*  11 


|88  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

place,  which  goes  by  the  name  of  the 
"gannister,"  or  lower  coal  measures,  we 
cannot  tell.  But  it  is  clear  at  least  that 
parts  of  that  ancient  sea  were  filling  up  and 
becoming  dry  land.  For  coal,  or  fossilized 
vegetable  matter,  becomes  more  and  more 
common  as  we  ascend  in  the  series  of  beds ; 
till  at  last  in  the  upper  coal  measures  the  enor- 
mous wealth  of  vegetation  which  grew,  much 
of  it,  where  it  is  now  found,  prove  the  exist- 
ence of  some  such  sheets  of  fertile  and  forest- 
clad  lowland  as  I  described  in  my  last  paper. 
Thousands  of  feet  of  rich  coral  reef;  thou- 
sands of  feet  of  barren  sands ;  then  thousands 
of  feet  of  rich  alluvial  forest ;— and  all  these 
sliding  into  each  other,  if  not  in  one  place,  then 
in  another,  without  violent  break  or  change-: 
this  is  the  story  which  the  lime  in  the  mortar 
and  the  coal  on  the  fire — between  the  two — 
reveal. 


THE  SLATES  ON  THE  ROOF. 

r  I  ^HE  slates  on  the  roof  should  be,  when 
rightly  understood,  a  pleasant  subject 
for  contemplation  to  the  dweller  in  a  town. 
I  do  not  ask  him  to  imitate  the  boy  who,  cliff- 
bred  from  his  youth,  used  to  spend  stolen 
hours  on  the  house-top,  with  his  back  against 
a  chimney  stalk,  transfiguring  in  his  imagina- 
tion  the  roof-slopes  into  mountain-sides,  the 
slates  into  sheets  of  rock,  the  cats  into  lions, 
and  the  sparrows  into  eagles.  I  only  wish 
that  he  should — at  least  after  reading  this 
paper — let  the  slates  on  the  roof  carry  him 
back  in  fancy  to  the  mountains  whence  they 
came  ;  perhaps  to  pleasant  trips  to  the  lakes 


190  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

— 

i  and  hills  of  Cumberland,  Westmoreland,  and 
North  Wales  ;  and  to  recognise — as  he  will 
do  if  he  have  intellect  as  well  as  fancy — how 
beautiful  and  how  curious  an  object  is  a 
common  slate. 

Beautiful:  not  only  for  the  compactness 
and  delicacy  of  its  texture,  and  for  the 
regularity  and  smoothness  of  its  surface,  but 
still  more  for  its  colour.  Whether  merely 
warm  grey,  as  when  dry,  or  bright  purple,  as 
when  wet,  the  colour  of  the  English  slate  well 
justifies  Mr.  Ruskin's  saying,  that  wherever 
there  is  a  brick  wall  and  a  slate  roof,  there 
need  be  no  want  of  rich  colour  in  an  English 
landscape.  But  most  beautiful  is  the  hue  of 
slate,  when,  shining  wet  in  the  sunshine  after 
a  summer  shower,  its  blue  is  brought  out  in 
rich  contrast  by  golden  spots  of  circular 
lichen,  whose  spores,  I  presume,  have  tra- 
velled with  it  off  its  native  mountains.  Then, 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF. 


indeed,  it  reminds  the  voyager  of  a  sight 
which  it  almost  rivals  in  brilliancy  —  of  the 
sapphire  of  the  deep  ocean,  brought  out  into 
blazing  intensity  by  the  contrast  of  the  golden 
patches  of  floating  gulf-weed  beneath  the 
tropic  sun. 

Beautiful,  I  say,  is  the  slate  ;  and  curious 
likewise,  nay,  venerable  ;  a  most  ancient  and 
elaborate  work  of  God,  which  has  lasted  long 
enough,  and  endured  enough  likewise,  to 
bring  out  in  it  whatsoever  latent  capabilities 
of  strength  and  usefulness  might  lie  hid  in  it  ; 
which  has  literally  been  —  as  far  as  such 
>  words  can  apply  to  a  thing  inanimate  — 

"  Heated  hot  with  burning  fears, 
And  bathed  in  baths  of  hissing  tears, 
And  battered  by  the  strokes  of  doom 
To  shape  and  use." 

And  yet  it  was  at  first  nought  but  an  ugly 
lump  of  soft  and  shapeless  ooze. 


1J)3  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

Therefore,  the  slates  to  me  are  as  a  parable?, 
on  which  I  will  not  enlarge,  but  will  leave 
each  reader  to  interpret  it  for  himself.  I  shall 
confine  myself  now  to  proofs  that  slate  is 
hardened  mud,  and.  to  hints  as  to  how  it 
assumed  its  present  form. 

That  slate  may  have  been  once  mud,  is 
made  probable  by  the  simple  fact  that  it  can 
be  turned  into  mud  again.  If  you  grind  up 
slate,  and  then  analyse  it,  you  will  find  its 
mineral  constituents  to  be  exactly  those  of  a 
fine,  rich,  and  tenacious  clay.  The  slate 
districts  (at  least  in  Snowdon)  carry  such  a 
rich  clay  on  them,  wherever  it  is  not  masked 
by  the  ruins  of  other  rocks.  At  Ilfra- 
combe,  in  North  Devon,  the  passage  from 
slate  below  to  clay  above,  may  be  clearly 
seen.  Wherever  the  top  of  the  slate  beds, 
and  the  soil  upon  it,  is  laid  bare,  the  black 
layers  of  slate  may  be  seen  gradually  melting 


THE  SLATES  ON  THE  ROOF.       193 

—if  I  may  use  the  word — under  the  influence 
of  rain  and  frost,  into  a  rich  tenacious  clay, 
which  is  now  not  black,  like  its  parent  slate, 
but  red,  from  the  oxidation  of  the  iron  which 
it  contains. 

But,  granting  this,  how  did  the  first  change 
take  place  ? 

It  must  be  allowed,  at  starting,  that  time 
enough  has  elapsed,  and  events  enough  have 
happened,  since,  our  supposed  mud  began 
first  to  become  slate,  to  allow  of  many  and 
strange  transformations.  For  these  slates 
are  found  in  the  oldest  beds  of  rocks,  save 
one  series,  in  the  known  world ;  and  it  is 
notorious  that  the  older  and  lower  the  beds 
in  which  the  slates  are  found,  the  better,  that 
is,  the  more  perfectly  elaborate,  is  the  slate. 
The  best  slates  of  Snowdon — I  must  confine 
myself  to  the  district  which  I  know  person- 
ally— are  found  in  the  so-called  "  Cambrian  " 


194  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


beds.  Below  these  beds  but  one  series  of 
beds  is  as  yet  known  in  the  world,  called  the 
"  Laurentian."  They  occur,  to  a  thickness 
of  some  eighty  "thousand  feet,  in  Labrador, 
Canada,  and  the  Adirondack  mountains  of 
New  York :  but  their  representatives  in  Europe 
are,  as  far  as  is  known,  only  to  be  found 
in  the  north-west  highlands  of  Scotland,  and 
in  the  island  of  Lewis,  which  consists  entirely 
of  them.  And  it  is  to  be  remembered,  as  a 
proof  of  their  inconceivable  antiquity,  that 
they  have  been  upheaved  and  shifted  long 
before  the  Cambrian  rocks  were  laid  down 
"  unconformably "  on  their  worn  and  broken 
edges. 

Above  the  "Cambrian"  slates  —  whether 
the  lower  and  older  ones  of  Penrhyn  and 
Llanberris,  which  are  the  same — one  slate 
mountain  being  worked  at  both  sides  in  two 
opposite  valleys  — or  the  upper  and  newer 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  195 

slates  of  Tremadoc,  lie  other  and  newer  slate- 
bearing  beds  of  inferior  quality,  and  belong- 
ing to  a  yet  newer  world,  the  "  Silurian." 
To  them  belong  the  Llandeilo  flags  and  slates 
of  Wales,  and  the  Skiddaw  slates  of  Cumber- 
land, amid  beds  abounding  in  extinct  fossil 
forms.  Fossil  shells  are  found,  it  is  true,  in 
the  upper  Cambrian  beds.  In  the  lower  they 
have  all  but  disappeared.  Whether  their 
traces  have  been  obliterated  by  heat  and 
pressure,  and  chemical  action,  during  long 
ages ;  or  whether,  in  these  lower  beds,  we  are 
actually  reaching  that  "  Primordial  Zone"  con- 
ceived of  by  M.  Barrande,  namely,  rocks  which 
existed  before  living  things  had  begun  to 
people  this  planet,  is  a  question  not  yet 
answered.  I  believe  the  former  theory  to  be 
the  true  one.  That  there  was  life,  in  the  sea 
at  least,  even  before  the  oldest  Cambrian 
rocks  were  laid  down,  is  proved  by  the  dis- 


196  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

covery  of  the  now  famous  fossil,  the  Eozoon, 
in  the  Laurentian  limestones,  which  seems  to 
have  grown  layer  after  layer,  and  to  have 
formed  reefs  of  limestone  as  do  the  living 
coral-building  polypes.  We  know  no  more 
as  yet.  But  all  that  we  do  know  points  down- 
wards, downwards  still,  warning  us  that  we 
must  dig  deeper  than  we  have  dug  as  yet,  before 
we  reach  the  graves  of  the  first  living  things. 

Let  this  suffice  at  present  for  the  Cambrian 
and  Laurentian  rocks. 

The  Silurian  rocks,  lower  and  upper,  which 
in  these  islands  have  their  chief  development 
in  Wales,  and  which  are  nearly  thirty-eight 
thousand  feet  thick;  and  the  Devonian  or 
Old  Red  sandstone  beds,  which  in  the  Fans 
of  Brecon  and  Carmarthenshire  attain  a 
thickness  of  ten  thousand  feet,  must  be 
passed  through  in  an  upward  direction  be- 
fore we  reach  the  bottom  of  that  Carboni- 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  197 

V 

ferous  Limestone  of  which  I  spoke  in  my  last 
paper.  We  thus  find,  on  the  Cambrian  rocks, 
forty  -  five  thousand  feet  at  least  of  newer 
rocks,  in  several  cases  lying  unconformably 
on  each  other,  showing  thereby  that  the 
lower  beds  had  been  upheaved,  and  their 
edges  worn  off  on  a  sea-shore,  ere  the  upper 
were  laid  down  on  them  ;  and  throughout  this 
vast  thickness  of  rocks,  the  remains  of  hun- 
dreds of  forms  of  animals,  corals,  shells,  fish, 
older  forms  dying  out  in  the  newer  rocks,  and 
new  ones  taking  their  places  in  a  steady 
succession  of  ever-varying  forms,  till  those 
in  the  upper  beds  have  become  unlike  those 
in  the  lower,  and  all  are  from  the  beginning 
more  or  less  unlike  any  existing  now  on  earth. 
Whole  families,  indeed,  disappear  entirely, 
like  the  Trilobites,  which  seern  to  have 
swarmed  in  the  Silurian  seas,  holding  the 
same  place  there  as  crabs  and  shrimps  do 


198  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

in  our  modern  seas.  They  vanish  after  the 
period  of  the  coal,  and  their  place  is  taken 
by  an  allied  family  of  Crustaceans,  of  which 
only  one  form  (as  far  as  I  am  aware)  lingers 
now  on  earth,  namely,  the  "King  Crab,"  or 
Limulus,  of  the  Indian  Seas,  a  well-known 
animal,  of  which  specimens  may  be  some- 
times seen  alive  in  English  aquaria.  So 
perished,  in  the  lapse  of  those  same  ages, 
the  armour-plated  or  "  Ganoid "  fish  which 
Hugh  Miller  made  so  justly  famous — and 
which  made  him  so  justly  famous  in  return — 
appearing  first  in  the  upper  Silurian  beds, 
and  abounding  in  vast  variety  of  strange 
forms  in  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  but  gra- 
dually disappearing  from  the  waters  of  the 
world,  till  their  only  representatives,  as  far 
as  known,  are  the  Lepidostei,  or  "  Bony 
Pikes,"  of  North  America;  the  Polypteri  of 
the  Nile  and  Senegal;  the  Lepidosirens  of 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  199 

the  African  lakes  and  Western  rivers;  the 
Ceratodus  or  Barramundi  of  Queensland  (the 
two  latter  of  which  approach  Amphibians), 
and  one  or  two  more  fantastic  forms,  either 
rudimentary  or  degraded,  which  have  lasted 
on  here  and  there  in  isolated  stations  through 
long  ages,  comparatively  unchanged  while 
all  the  world  is  changed  around  them,  and 
their  own  kindred  buried  like  the  fossil  Cera- 
todus of  the  Trias,  beneath  thousands  of  feet 
of  ancient  rock,  among  creatures  the  likes 
whereof  are  not  to  be  found  now  on  earth. 
And  these  are  but  two  examples  out  of 
hundreds  of  the  vast  changes  which  have 
taken  place  in  the  animal  life  of  the  globe, 
between  the  laying  down  of  the  Cambrian 
slates  and  the  present  time. 

Surely — and  it  is  to  this  conclusion  I  have 
been  tending  throughout  a  seemingly  wander- 
ing paragraph — surely  there  has  been  time 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


enough  during  all  those  ages  for  clay  to 
change  into  slate. 

And  how  were  they  changed  ? 

I  think  I  cannot  teach  my  readers  this 
more  simply  than  by  asking  them  first  to  buy 
Sheet  No.  LXXVIII.  S.E.  (Bangor)  of  the 
Snowdon  district  of  the  Government  Geo- 
logical Survey,  which  may  be  ordered  at  any 
good  stationer's,  price  2.9. ;  and  study  it  with 
me.  He  will  see  down  the  right  hand  margin 
interpretations  of  the  different  colours  which 
mark  the  different  beds,  beginning  with  the 
youngest  (alluvium)  atop,  and  going  down 
through  Carboniferous  Limestone  and  Sand- 
stone, Upper  Silurian,  Lower  Silurian,  Cam- 
brian, and  below  them  certain  rocks  marked 
of  different  shades  of  red,  which  signify  rocks 
either  altered  by  heat,  or  poured  out  of  old 
volcanic  vents.  He  will  next  see  that  the 
map  is  covered  \.ith  a  labyrinth  of  red  patches 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF. 


and  curved  lines,  signifying  the  outcrop  or 
appearance  at  the  surface  of  these  volcanic 
beds.  They  lie  at  every  conceivable  slope ; 
and  the  hills  and  valleys  have  been  scooped 
out  by  rain  and  ice  into  every  conceivable 
slope  likewise.  Wherefore  we  see,  here  a 
broad  patch  of  red,  where  the  back  of  a  sheet 
of  Lava,  Porphyry,  Greenstone,  or  what  not, 
is  exposed ;  there  a  narrow  line  curving 
often  with  the  curve  of  the  hill-side,  where 
only  the  edge  of  a  similar  sheet  is  exposed ; 
and  every  possible  variety  of  shape  and  atti- 
tude between  these  two.  He  will  see  also 
large  spaces  covered  with  little  coloured  dots, 
which  signify  (as  he  will  find  at  the  margin) 
beds  of  volcanic  ash.  If  he  look  below 
the  little  coloured  squares  on  the  margin,  he 
will  see  figures  marking  the  strike,  or  direc- 
tion of  the  inclination  of  the  beds — inclined, 
vertical,  horizontal,  contorted ;  that  the  white 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


lines  in  the  map  signify  faults,  i.e.  shifts  in 
the  strata ;  the  gold  lines,  lodes  of  metal — 
the  latter  of  which  I  should  advise  him 
strongly,  in  this  district  at  least,  not  to 
meddle  with :  but  to  button  up  his  pockets, 
and  to  put  into  the  fire,  in  wholesome  fear 
of  his  own  weakness  and  ignorance,  any  puffs 
of  mining  companies  which  may  be  sent  him 
—  as  one  or  two  have  probably  been  sent  him 
already. 

Furnished  with  which  keys  to  the  map,  let 
him  begin  to  con  it  over,  sure  that  there  is 
if  not  an  order,  still  a  grand  meaning  in  all 
its  seeming  confusion ;  and  let  him,  if  he  be  a 
courteous  and  grateful  person,  return  due 
thanks  to  Professor  Ramsay  for  having  found 
it  all  out;  not  without  wondering,  as  I  have 
often  wondered,  how  even  Professor  Ramsay's 
acuteness  and  industry  could  find  it  all  out. 

When  my  reader  has   studied   awhile   the 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  203 

confusion — for  it  is  a  true  confusion — of  the 
different  beds,  he  will  ask,  or  at  least  have  a 
right  to  ask,  what  known  process  of  nature 
can  have  produced  it  ?  How  have  these 
various  volcanic  rocks,  which  he  sees  marked  as 
Felspathic  Traps,  Quartz  Porphyries,  Green- 
stones, and  so  forth,  got  intermingled  with 
beds  which  he  is  told  to  believe  are  vol- 
canic ashes,  and  those  again  with  fossil- 
bearing  Silurian  beds  and  Cambrian  slates, 
which  he  is  told  to  believe  were  deposited 
under  water?  And  his  puzzle  will  not  be 
lessened  when  he  is  told  that,  in  some  cases, 
as  in  that  of  the  summit  of  Snowdon,  these 
>'very  volcanic  ashes  contain  fossil  shells. 

The  best  answer  I  can  give  is  to  ask  him 
to  use  his  imagination,  or  his  common  sense ; 
and  to  picture  to  himself  what  must  go  on  in 
the  case  of  a  submarine  eruption,  such  as 
broke  out  otfthe  coast  of  Iceland  in  1783  and 


204  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

1830,  off  the  Azores  in  1811,  and  in  our  day 
in  more  than  one  spot  in  the  Pacific  Ocean. 

A  main  bore  or  vent — or  more  than  one — 
opens  itself  between  the  bottom  of  the  sea 
and  the  nether  fires.  From  each  rushes  an 
enormous  jet  of  high-pressure  steam  and 
other  gases,  which  boils  up  through  the  sea, 
and  forms  a  cloud  above ;  that  cloud  descends 
again  in  heavy  rain,  and  gives  out  often  true 
lightning  from  its  under  side. 

But  it  does  more.  It  acts  as  a  true  steam- 
gun,  hurling  into  the  air  fragments  of  cold 
rock  rasped  off  from  the  sides  of  the  bore, 
and  fragments  also  of  melted  lava,  and  clouds 
of  dust,  which  fall  again  into  the  sea,  and 
form  there  beds  either  of  fine  mud  or  of 
breccia — that  is,  fragments  of  stone  embedded 
in  paste.  This,  the  reader  will  understand, 
is  no  fancy  sketch,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned. 
I  have  steamed  into  craters  sawn  through 


THE  SLATES  ON  THE  ROOF.       205 

by  the  sea,  and  showing  sections  of  beds 
of  ash  dipping  outwards  and  under  the  sea, 
and  in  them  boulders  and  pebbles  of  every 
size,  which  had  been  hurled  out  of  the  crater ; 
and  in  them  also  veins  of  hardened  lava, 
which  had  burrowed  out  through  the  soft 
ashes  of  the  cone.  Of  those  lava  veins  I 
will  speak  presently.  What  I  want  the  reader 
to  think  of  now  is  the  immense  quantity  of 
ash  which  the  steam-mitrailleuse  hurls  to  so 
vast  a  height  into  the  air,  that  it  is  often 
drifted  many  miles  down  to  leeward.  To 
give  two  instances  :  The  jet  of  steam  from 
Vesuvius,  in  the  eruption  of  1822,  rose  more 
than  four  miles  into  the  air ;  the  jet  from 
the  Souffriere  of  St.  Vincent  in  the  West 
Indies,  in  1812,  probably  rose  higher;  certainly 
it  met  the  N.E.  trade-wind,  for  it  poured 
down  a  layer  of  ashes,  several  inches  thick, 
not  only  on  St.  Vincent  itself,  but  on  Barba- 


206  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

does,  eighty  miles  to  windward,  and  therefore 
on  all  the  sea  between.  Now  let  us  consider 
what  that  represents — a  layer  of  fine  mud, 
laid  down  at  the  bottom  of  the  ocean,  several 
inches  thick,  eighty  miles  at  least  long,  and 
twenty  miles  perhaps  broad,  by  a  single 
eruption.  Suppose  that  hardened  in  long 
ages  (as  it  would  be  under  pressure)  into  a 
bed  of  fine-grained  Felstone,  or  volcanic  ash ; 
and  we  can  understand  how  the  ash-beds  of 
Snowdonia — which  may  be  traced  some  of 
them  for  many  square  miles— were  laid  down 
at  the  bottom  of  an  ancient  sea. 

But  now  about  the  lavas  or  true  volcanic 
rocks,  which  are  painted  (as  is  usual  in 
geological  maps)  red.  Let  us  go  down  to 
the  bottom  of  the  sea,  and  build  up  our  volcano 
towards  the  surface. 

First,  as  I  said,  the  subterranean  steam 
would  blast  a  bore.  The  dust  and  stones 


THK    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  2OJ 

rasped  and  blasted  out  of  that  hole  would  be 
spread  about  the  sea-bottom  as  an  ash-bed 
sloping  away  round  the  hole ;  then  the  molten 
lava  would  rise  in  the  bore,  and  flow  out  over 
the  ashes  and  the  sea-bottom — perhaps  in  one 
direction,  perhaps  all  round.  Then,  usually, 
the  volcano,  having  vented  itself,  would  be 
quieter  for  a  time,  till  the  heat  accumulated 
below,  and  more  ash  was  blasted  out,  making 
a  second  ash-bed ;  and  then  would  follow  a 
second  lava  flow.  Thus  are  produced  the 
alternate  beds  of  lava  and  ash  which  are  so 
common. 

Now  suppose  that  at  this  point  the  volcano 
was  exhausted,  and  lay  quiet  for  a  lew 
hundred  years,  or  more.  If  there  was  any 
land  near,  from  which  mud  and  sand  were 
washed  down,  we  might  have  layers  on  layers 
of  sediment  deposited,  with  live  shells,  £c., 
dwelling  in  them,  which  would  be  con- 


208  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

verted  into  fossils  when  they  died  ;  and  so 
we  should  have  fossiliferous  beds  over  the 
ashes  and  lavas.  Indeed,  shells  might  live 
and  thrive  in  the  ash-mud  itself,  when  it 
cooled,  and  the  sea  grew  quiet,  as  they  have 
lived  and  thriven  in  Snowdonia. 

Now  suppose  that  after  these  sedimentary 
beds  are  laid  down  by  water,  the  volcano 
breaks  out  again — what  would  happen  ? 

Many  things :  specially  this,  which  has 
often  happened  already. 

The  lava,  kept  down  by  the  weight  of  these 
new  rocks,  searches  for  the  point  of  least  re- 
sistance, and  finds  it  in  a  more  horizontal 
direction.  It  burrows  out  through  the  softer 
ash-beds,  and  between  the  sedimentary  beds, 
spreading  itself  along  horizontally.  This 
process  accounts  for  the  very  puzzling,  though 
very  common  case  in  Snowdon  and  elsewhere, 
in  which  we  find  lavas  interstratified  with 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  209 

rocks  which  are  plainly  older  than  those 
lavas.  Perhaps  when  that  is  done  the  volcano 
has  got  rid  of  all  its  lava,  and  is  quiet. 
But  if  not,  sooner  or  later,  it  bores  up 
through  the  new  sedimentary  rocks,  faulting 
them  by  earthquake  shocks  till  it  gets  free 
vent,  and  begins  its  layers  of  alternate  ash 
and  lava  once  more. 

And  consider  this  fact  also  :  If  near  the  first 
(as  often  happens)  there  is  another  volcano, 
the  lava  from  one  may  run  over  the  lava  from 
the  other,  and  we  may  have  two  lavas  oi 
different  materials  overlying  each  other,  which 
have  come  from  different  directions.  The 
ashes  blown  out  of  the  two  craters  may  mingle 
also ;  and  so,  in  the  course  of  ages,  the  result 
may  be  such  a  confusion  of  ashes,  lavas,  and 
sedimentary  rocks,  as  we  find  throughout  most 
mountain  ranges  ;  in  Snowdon,  in  the  Lake 
Mountains,  in  the  Auvergne  in  France,  in 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


Sicily  round  Etna,  in  Italy  round  Vesuvius, 
and  in  so  many  West  Indian  Islands :  the 
last  confusion  of  which  is  very  likely  to  be 
this: 

That  when  the  volcano  has  succeeded— as 
it  did  in  the  case  oi  Sabrina  Island  off  the 
Azores  in  1811,  and  as  it  did,  perhaps  often, 
in  Snowdonia — in  piling  up  an  ash  cone  some 
hundred  ieet  out  of  the  sea ;  that  —  as  has 
happened  to  Sabrina  Island — the  cone  is  sunk 
again  by  earthquakes,  and  gnawn  down  at 
the  same  time  by  the  sea-waves,  till  nothing 
is  left  but  a  shoal  under  water.  But  where 
have  all  its  vast  heaps  of  ashes  gone  ?  To  be 
spread  about  ever  the  bottom  of  the  sea, 
to  mingle  with  the  mud  already  there,  and  so 
make  beds  of  which,  like  many  in  Snowdon, 
we  cannot  say  whether  they  are  of  volcanic 
or  of  marine  origin,  because  they  are  of  both 

But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  sla.es  ? 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF. 


I  shall  not  be  surprised  if  my  readers  ask 
that  question  two  or  three  times  during  this 
paper.  But  they  must  be  kind  enough  to 
let  me  tell  my  story  my  own  way.  The 
slates  were  not  made  in  a  day,  and  I  fear 
they  cannot  be  explained  in  an  hour :  unless 
we  begin  carefully  at  the  beginning  in  order 
to  end  at  the  end.  Let  me  first  make  my 
readers  clearly  understand  that  all  our  slate- 
bearing  mountains,  and  most  also  of  the  non- 
slate-bearing  ones  likewise,  are  formed  after 
.the  fashion  which  I  have  described,  namely, 
beneath  the  sea.  I  do  not  say  that  there 
may  not  have  been,  again  and  again,  ash- 
cones  rising  above  the  surface  of  the  waves. 
But  if  so,  they  were  washed  away,  again  and 
again,  ages  before  the  land  assumed  anything 
of  its  present  shape;  ages  before  the  beds 
were  twisted  and  upheaved  as  they  are  now. 

And   therefore   I    beg   my   readers    to   put 
12 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


out  of  their  minds  once  and  for  all  the  fancy 
that  in  any  known  part  of  these  islands  craters 
are  to  be  still  seen,  such  as  exist  in  Etna,  or 
Vesuvius,  or  other  volcanos  now  at  work  in 
the  open  air. 

It  is  necessary  to  insist  on  this,  because 
many  people  hearing  that  certain  moun- 
tains are  volcanic,  conclude — and  very  natu- 
rally and  harmlessly — that  the  circular  lakes 
about  their  tops  are.  true  craters.  I  have 
been  told,  for  instance,  that  that  wonderful 
little  blue  Glas  Llyn,  under  the  highest  cliff  of 
Snowdon,  is  the  old  crater  of  the  mountain  ; 
and  I  have  heard  people  insist  that  a  similar 
lake,  of  almost  equal  grandeur,  in  the  south 
side  of  Cader  Idris,  is  a  crater  likewise. 

But  the  fact  is  not  so.  Any  one  acquainted 
with  recent  craters  would  see  at  once  that 
Glas  Llyn  is  not  an  ancient  one ;  and  I  am 
not  surprised  to  find  the  Government  geo- 


THE     SLATES     ON     THE     ROOF.  213 

legists  declaring  that  the  Llyn  on  Cader  Idris 
is  not  one  either.  The  fact  is,  that  the  crater, 
or  rather  the  place  where  the  crater  has  been, 
in  ancient  volcanos  of  this  kind,  is  probably 
now  covered  by  one  of  the  innumerable  bosses 
of  lava. 

For,  as  an  eruption  ceases,  the  melted  lava 
cools  in  the  vents,  and  hardens  ;  usually  into 
lava  infinitely  harder  than  the  ash-cone  round 
it ;  and  this,  when  the  ash-cone  is  washed 
off,  remains  as  the  highest  part  of  the  hill, 
as  in  the  Mont  Dore  and  the  Cantal  in 
France,  and  in  several  extinct  volcanos  in 
the  Antilles.  Of  course  the  lava  must  have 
been  poured  out,  and  the  ashes  blown  out, 
from  some  vents  or  other,  connected  with  the 
nether  world  of  fire ;  probably  from  many 
successive  vents.  For  in  volcanos,  when  one 
vent  is  choked,  another  is  wont  to  open  at 
some  fresh  point  of  least  resistance  among 


214  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

the  overlying  rocks.  But  where  are  these 
vents  ?  Buried  deep  under  successive  erup- 
tions, shifted  probably  from  their  places  by 
successive  upheavings  and  dislocations ;  and 
if  we  wanted  to  find  them  we  should  have  to 
quarry  the  mountain  range  all  over,  a  mile 
deep,  before  we  hit  upon  here  and  there  a 
tap-root  of  ancient  lava,  connecting  the  upper 
and  the  nether  worlds.  There  are  such  tap- 
roots, probably,  under  each  of  our  British 
mountain  ranges.  But  Snowdon,  certainly, 
does  not  owe  its  shape  to  the  fact  of  one  of 
these  old  fire  vents  being  under  it.  It  owes 
its  shape  simply  to  the  accident  of  some  of 
the  beds  toward  the  summit  being  especially 
hard,  and  thus  able  to  stand  the  wear  and 
tear  of  sea-wave,  ice,  and  rain.  Its  lakes 
have  been  formed  quite  regardless  of  the 
lie  of  the  rocks,  though  not  regardless  of 
their  relative  hardness.  But  what  forces 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  215 

scooped  them  out — whether  they  were  origin- 
ally holes  left  in  the  ground  by  earthquakes, 
and  deepened  since  by  rain  and  rivers,  or 
whether  they  were  scooped  out  by  ice,  or 
by  any  other  means,  is  a  question  on  which 
the  best  geologists  are  still  undecided — 
decided  only  on  this — that  craters  they  are 
not. 

As  for  the  enormous  changes  which  have 
taken  place  in  the  outline  of  the  whole  of 
the  mountains,  since  first  their  strata  were 
laid  down  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea :  I  shall 
giyje  facts  enough,  before  this  paper  is  done, 
to  enable  readers  to  judge  of  them  for  them- 
selves. 

The  reader  will  now  ask,  naturally  enough, 
how  such  a  heap  of  beds  as  I  have  described 
can  take  the  shape  of  mountains  like  Snow- 
don. 

Look  at  any  sea  cliff  in  which  the  strata 


2)6  TOWN     GEOLOGY. 

are  twisted  and  set  on  slope.  There  are 
hundreds  of  such  in  these  isles.  The  beds 
must  have  been  at  one  time  straight  and 
horizontal.  But  it  is  equally  clear  that  they 
have  been  folded  by  being  squeezed  laterally. 
At  least,  that  is  the  simplest  explanation, 
as  may  be  proved  by  experiment.  Take  a 
number  of  pieces  of  cloth,  or  any  such  stuff; 
lay  them  on  each  other,  and  then  squeeze 
them  together  at  each  end.  They  will 
arrange  themselves  in  folds,  just  as  the  beds 
of  the  cliff  have  done.  And  if,  instead  of 
cloth,  you  take  some  more  brittle  matter, 
you  will  find  that,  as  you  squeeze  on,  these 
folds  will  tend  to  snap  at  the  points  of 
greatest  tension  or  stretching,  which  will  be 
of  course  at  the  anticlinal  and  synclinal  lines 
— in  plain  English,  the  tops  and  bottoms  of 
the  folds.  Thus  cracks  will  be  formed  ;  and  if 
th^  pressure  goes  on,  the  ends  of  the  layers 


THE  SLATES  ON  THE  ROOF.       217 

will  shift  against  each  other  in  the  line  of 
those  cracks,  forming  faults  like  those  so 
common  in  rocks. 

But  again,  suppose  that  instead  of  squeez- 
ing these  broken  and  folded  lines  together 
any  more,  you  took  off  the  pressure  right  and 
left,  and  pressed  them  upwards  from  below, 
by  a  mimic  earthquake.  They  would  rise ; 
and  as  they  rose  leave  open  space  between 
them.  Now  if  you  could  contrive  to  squeeze 
into  them  from  below  a  paste,  which  would 
harden  in  the  cracks  and  between  the  layers, 
and  so  keep  them  permanently  apart,  you 
would  make  them  into  a  fair  likeness  of  an 
average  mountain  range — a  mess — if  I  may 
make  use  of  a  plain  old  word — of  rocks  which 
have,  by  alternate  contraction  and  expansion, 
helped  in  the  latter  case  by  the  injection  of 
molten  lava,  been  thrust  about  as  they  are  in 
most  mountain  ranges. 


2l8  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

That  such  a  contraction  and  expansion 
goes  on  in  the  crust  of  the  earth  is  evident ; 
for  here  are  the  palpable  effects  of  it.  And 
the  simplest  general  cause  which  I  can 
give  for  it  is  this  :  That  things  expand  as 
they  are  heated,  and  contract  as  they  are 
cooled. 

Now  I  am  not  learned  enough — and  were  I, 
I  have  not  time — to  enter  into  the  various 
theories  which  philosophers  have  put  forward, 
to  account  for  these  grand  phenomena. 

The  most  remarkable,  perhaps,  and  the 
most  probable,  is  the  theory  of  M.  Elie  de 
Beaumont,  which  is,  in  a  few  words,  this  : — 

That  this  earth,  like  all  the  planets,  must 
have  been  once  in  a  state  of  intense  heat 
throughout,  as  its  mass  inside  is  probably 
now. 

That  it  must  be  cooling,  and  giving  off  its 
heat  into  space. 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  219 

That,  therefore,  as  it  cools,  its  crust  must 
contract. 

That,  therefore,  in  contracting,  wrinkles 
(for  the  loftiest  mountain  chains  are  nothing 
but  tiny  wrinkles,  compared  with  the  whole 
mass  of  the  earth),  wrinkles,  I  say,  must  form 
on  its  surface  from  time  to  time.  And  that 
the  mountain  chains  are  these  wrinkles. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  we  may  safely  say  this. 
That  wherever  the  internal  heat  of  the  earth 
tends  (as  in  the  case  of  volcanos)  toward  a 
particular  spot,  that  spot  must  expand,  and 
swell  up,  bulging  the  rocks  out,  and  probably 
cracking  them,  and  inserting  melting  lava 
into  those  cracks  from  below.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  internal  heat  leaves  that  spot 
again,  and  it  cools,  then  it  must  contract 
more  or  less,  in  falling  inward  toward  the 
centre  of  the  earth ;  and  so  the  beds  must 
be  crumpled,  and  crushed,  and  shifted  against 

18* 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


each  other  still  more,  as  those  of  our  moun- 
tains have  been. 

But  here  may  arise,  in  some  of  my  readers' 
minds,  a  reasonable  question — If  these  up- 
heaved beds  were  once  horizontal,  should  we 
not  be  likely  to  find  them,  in  some  places, 
horizontal  still  ? 

A  reasonable  question,  and  one  which  ad- 
mits of  a  full  answer. 

They  know,  of  course,  that  there  has  been 
a  gradual,  but  steady,  change  in  the  animals 
of  this  planet ;  and  that  the  relative  age  of 
beds  can,  on  the  strength  of  that  known 
change,  be  determined  generally  by  the  fos- 
sils, usually  shells,  peculiar  to  them :  so  that 
if  we  find  the  same  fashion  of  shells,  and 
still  more  the  same  species  of  shells,  in  two 
beds  in  different  quarters  of  the  world,  then 
we  have  a  right  to  say — These  beds  were  laid 
down  at  least  about  the  same  time.  That  is 


THE     SLATES     ON     THE     ROOF. 


a  general  rule  among  all  geologists,  and  not 
to  be  gainsaid. 

Now  I  think  I  may  say,  that,  granting  that 
we  can  recognise  a  bed  by  its  fossils,  there 
are  few  or  no  beds  which  are  found  in  one 
place  upheaved,  broken,  and  altered  by  heat, 
which  are  not  found  in  some  other  place  still 
horizontal,  unbroken,  unaltered,  and  more  or 
less  as  they  were  at  first. 

From  the  most  recent  beds  ;  from  the  up- 
heaved coral-rocks  of  the  West  Indies,  and 
the  upheaved  and  faulted  boulder  clay  and 
chalk  of  the  Isle  of  Moen  in  Denmark — 
downwards  through  all  the  strata,  down  to 
that  very  ancient  one  in  which  the  best  slates 
are  found,  this  rule,  I  believe,  stands  true. 

It  stands  true,  certainly,  of  the  ancient 
Silurian  rocks  of  Wales,  Cumberland,  Ireland, 
and  Scotland. 

For,  throughout  great  tracts  of  Russia,  and 


TOWN    GEOLOGY. 


in  parts  of  Norway  and  Sweden,  Sir  Roderick 
Murchison  discovered  our  own  Silurian  beds, 
recognisable  from  their  peculiar  fossils.  But 
in  what  state  ?  Not  contracted,  upheaved, 
and  hardened,  to  slates  and  grits,  as  they  are 
in  Wales  and  elsewhere :  but  horizontal,  un- 
broken, and  still  soft,  because  undisturbed  by 
volcanic  rocks  and  earthquakes.  At  the  bot- 
tom of  them  all,  near  Petersburg,  Sir  Roderick 
found  a  shale  of  dried  mud  (to  quote  his  own 
words),  "  so  soft  and  incoherent  that  it  is 
even  used  by  sculptors  for  modelling,  al- 
though it  underlies  the  great  mass  of  fossil- 
bearing  Silurian  rocks,  and  is,  therefore;  of 
the  same  age  as  the  lower  crystalline  hard 
slates  of  North  Wales.  So  entirely  have 
most  of  these  oldest  rocks  in  Russia  been 
exempted  from  the  influence  of  change, 
throughout  those  enormous  periods  which 
have  passed  away  since  their  accumulation." 


THE    SIATKS    ON    THE    ROOF.  223 

Among  the  many  discoveries  which  science 
owes  to  that  illustrious  veteran,  I  know  none 
more  valuable  for  its  bearing  on  the  whole 
question  of  the  making  of  the  earth-crust, 
than  this  one  magnificent  fact. 

But  what  a  contrast  between  these  Scan- 
dinavian and  Russian  rocks  and  those  of 
Britain  !  Never  exceeding,  in  Scandinavia, 
a  thousand  feet  in  thickness,  and  lying 
usually  horizontal,  as  they  were  first  laid 
down,  they  are  swelled  in  Britain  to  a  thick- 
ness of  thirty  thousand  feet,  by  intruded 
lavas  and  ashes  ;  snapt,  turned,  set  on  end 
at  every  conceivable  angle  ;  shifted  against 
each  other  to  such  an  extent,  that,  to  give 
a  single  instance,  in  the  Vale  of  Gwynnant, 
under  Snowdon,  an  immense  wedge  of  por- 
phyry has  been  thrust  up,  in  what  is  now 
the  bottom  of  the  valley,  between  rocks  far 
newer  than  it,  on  one  side  to  a  height  of  eight 


21}.  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

hundred,  on  the  other  to  a  height  of  eighteen 
hundred  feet  —  half  the  present  height  of 
Snowdon.  Nay,  the  very  slate  beds  of 
Snowdonia  have  not  forced  their  way  up 
from  under  the  mountain  without  long  and 
fearful  struggles.  They  are  set  in  places 
upright  on  end,  then  horizontal  again,  then 
sunk  in  an  opposite  direction,  then  curled 
like  sea-waves,  then  set  nearly  upright  once 
more,  and  faulted  through  and  through,  six 
times,  I  believe,  in  the  distance  of  a  mile  or 
two  ;  they  carry  here  and  there  on  their  backs 
patches  of  newer  beds,  the  rest  of  which  has 
long  vanished;  and  in  their  rise  they  have 
hurled  back  to  the  eastward,  and  set  upright, 
what  is  no\v  the  whole  western  flank  of  Snow- 
don, a  mass  of  rock  which  was  then  several 
times  as  thick  as  it  is  now. 

The  force  which  thus  tortured  them   was 
probably  exerted  by  the  great  mass  of  vol- 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE     ROOK.  2*5 

canic  Quartz-porphyry,  which  rises  from 
under  them  to  the  north-west,  crossing  the 
end  of  the  lower  lake  of  Llanberris ;  and 
indeed  the  shifts  and  convulsions  which  have 
taken  place  between  them  and  the  Menai 
Straits  are  so  vast  that  they  can  only  be 
estimated  by  looking  at  them  on  the  section 
which  may  be  found  at  the  end  of  Professor 
Ramsay's  "  Geological  Survey  of  North 
Wales."  But  any  one  who  will  study  that 
section,  and  use  (as  with  the  map)  a  little 
imagination  and  common  sense,  will  see  that 
between  the  heat  of  that  Porphyry,  which 
must  have  been  poured  out  as  a  fluid  mass 
as  hot,  probably,  as  melted  iron,  and  the 
pressure  of  it  below,  and  of  the  Silurian 
beds  above,  the  Cambrian  mud-strata  of 
Llanberris  and  Penrhyn  quarries  must  have 
suffered  enough  to  change  them  into  some- 
thing very  different  from  mud,  and,  therefore, 


326  •      TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

probably,  into  what  they  are  now — namely, 
slate. 

And  now,  at  last,  we  have  got  to  the  slates 
on  the  roof,  and  may  disport  ourselves  over 
them — like  the  cats. 

Look  at  any  piece  of  slate.  All  know  that 
slate  splits  or  cleaves  freely,  in  one  direction 
only,  into  flat  layers.  Now  any  one  would 
suppose  at  first  sight,  and  fairly  enough,  that 
the  flat  surface — the  "plane  of  cleavage" — 
was  also  the  plane  of  bedding.  In  simpler 
English  we  should  say — The  mud  which  has 
hardened  into  the  slate  was  laid  down 
horizontally ;  and  therefore  each  slate  is  one 
of  the  little  horizontal  beds  of  it,  perhaps  just 
what  was  laid  down  in  a  single  tide.  We 
should  have  a  right  to  do  so,  because  that 
would  be  true  of  most  sedimentary  rocks. 
But  it  would  not  be  true  of  slate.  The 
plane  of  bedding  in  slate  has  nothing  to 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  227 

rto  with  the  plane  of  cleavage.  Or,  more 
plainly,  the  mud  of  which  the  slate  is 
made  may  have  been  deposited  at  the  sea- 
bottom  at  any  angle  to  the  plane  of  cleavage. 
We  may  sometimes  see  the  lines  of  the 
true  bedding — the  lines  which  were  actually 
horizontal  when  the  mud  was  laid  down — 
in  bits  of  slate,  and  find  them  sometimes 
perpendicular  to,  sometimes  inclined  to,  and 
sometimes  again  coinciding  with  the  plane 
of  cleavage,  which  they  have  evidently  ac- 
quired long  after. 

Nay,  more.  These  parallel  planes  of 
cleavage,  at  each  of  which  the  slate  splits 
freely,  will  run  through  a  whole  moun- 
tain at  the  same  angle,  though  the  beds 
through  which  they  run  may  be  tilted  at  dif- 
ferent angles,  and  twisted  into  curves. 

Now  what  has  made  this  change  in  the 
rock?  We  do  not  exactly  know.  One  thing 


228  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

is  clear,  that  the  particles  of  the  now  solid 
rock  have  actually  moved  on  themselves, 
And  this  is  proved  by  a  very  curious  fact — 
which  the  reader,  if  he  geologizes  about  slate 
quarries  much,  may  see  with  his  own  eyes. 
The  fossils  in  the  slate  are  often  distorted 
into  quaint  shapes,  pulled  out  long  if  they 
lie  along  the  plane  of  cleavage,  or  squeezed 
together,  or  doubled  down  on  both  sides, 
if  they  lie  across  the  plane.  So  that  some 
force  has  been  at  work  which  could  actually 
change  the  shape  of  hard  shells,  very  slowly, 
no  doubt,  else  it  would  have  snapped  and 
crumbled  them. 

If  I- am  asked  what  that  force  was,  I  do  not 
know.  I  should  advise  young  geologists  to 
read  what  Sir  Henry  de  la  Beche  has  said  on 
it  in  his  admirable  "Geological  Observer," 
pp.  706 — 725.  He  will  find  there,  too,  some 
remarks  on  that  equally  mysterious  phe- 


THE     SLATES     ON     THE     ROOF.  229 

nomena  of  jointing,  which  you  may  see  in 
almost  all  the  older  rocks ;  it  is  common  in 
limestones.  All  we  can  say  is,  that  some 
force  has  gone  on,  or  may  be  even  now  going 
on,  in  the  more  ancient  rocks,  which  is  similar 
to  that  which  produces  single  crystals  ;  and 
similar,  too,  to  that  which  produced  the 
jointed  crystals  of  basalt,  i.e.  lava,  at  the 
Giant's  Causeway,  in  Ireland,  and  Staifa,  in 
the  Hebrides.  Two  philosophers — Mr.  Robert 
Were  Fox  and  Mr.  Robert  Hunt — are  of 
opinion  that  the  force  which  has  determined 
the  cleavage  of  slates  may  be  that  of  the 
electric  currents,  which  (as  is  well  known) 
run  through  the  crust  of  the  earth.  Mr. 
Sharpe,  I  believe,  attributes  the  cleavage  to 
the  mere  mechanical  pressure  of  enormous 
weights  of  rock,  especially  where  crushed  by 
earthquakes.  Professor  Rogers,  again,  points 
out  that  as  these  slates  may  have  been  highly 


330  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

heated,  thermal  electricity  (i.e.  electricity 
brought  out  by  heat)  may  have  acted  on 
them. 

One  thing  at  least  is  clear.  That  the  best 
slates  are  found  among  ancient  lavas,  and 
also  in  rocks  which  are  faulted  and  tilted 
enormously,  all  which  could  not  have  hap- 
pened without  a  proportionately  enormous 
pressure,  and  therefore  heat ;  and  next  that 
the  best  slates  are  invariably  found  in  the 
oldest  beds — that  is,  in  the  beds  which  have 
had  most  time  to  endure  the  changes,  whether 
mechanical  or  chemical,  which  have  made  the 
earth's  surface  what  we  see  it  now. 

Another  startling  fact  the  section  of 
Snowdonia,  and  I  believe  of  most  mountain 
chains  in  these  islands,  would  prove — namely, 
that  the  contour  of  the  earth's  surface,  as  we 
see  it  now,  depends  very  little,  certainly  in 
mountains  composed  of  these  elder  rocks 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  23! 

upon  the  lie  of  the  strata,  or  beds,  but  has 
been  carved  out  by  great  forces,  long  after 
those  beds  were  not  only  laid  down  and 
hardened,  but  faulted  and  tilted  on  end. 
Snowdon  itself  is  so  remarkable  an  instance 
of  this  fact  that,  as  it  is  a  mountain  which 
every  one  in  these  happy  days  of  excursion- 
trains  and  steamers  either  has  seen  or  can 
see,  I  must  say  a  few  more  words  about  it. 

Any  one  who  saw  that  noble  peak  leaping 
high  into  the  air,  dominating  all  the  country 
round,  at  least  upon  three  sides,  and  was 
told  that  its  summit  consisted  of  beds  much 
newer,  not  much  older,  than  the  slate -beds 
fifteen  hundred  feet  down  on  its  north- 
western flank — any  one,  I  say,  would  have 
the  right  at  first  sight,  on  hearing  of  earth- 
quake faults  and  upheavals,  to  say — The  peak 
of  Snowdon  has  been  upheaved  to  its  pre- 
sent height  above  and  out  of  the  lower 


232  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

lands  around.  .But  when  he  came  to  examine 
sections,  he  would  find  his  reasonable  guess 
utterly  wrong.  Snowdon  is  no  swelling  up 
of  the  earth's  crust.  The  beds  do  not,  as  they 
would  in  that  case,  slope  up  to  it.  They 
slope  up  from  it,  to  the  north-west  in  one 
direction,  and  the  south-south-west  in  the 
other ;  and  Snowdon  is  a  mere  insignificant 
boss,  left  hanging  on  one  slope  of  what  was 
once  an  enormous  trough,  or  valley,  of  strata 
far  older  than  itself.  By  restoring  these 
strata,  in  the  direction  of  the  angles,  in  which 
they  crop  out,  and  vanish  at  the  surface,  it  is 
found  that  to  the  north-west — the  direction  of 
the  Menai  Straits  —  they  must  once  have 
risen  to  a  height  of  at  least  six  or  seven 
thousand  feet ;  and  more,  by  restoring  them, 
specially  the  ash-bed  of  Snowdon,  towards 
the  south-east  —  which  can  be  done  by  the 
guidance  of  certain  patches  of  it  left  on  other 


THE  SLATES  ON  THE  ROOF.       233 

hills— it  is  found  that  south  of  Ffestiniog, 
where  the  Cambrian  rocks  rise  again  to 
the  surface,  the  south  side  of  the  trough  must 
have  sloped  upwards  to  a  height  of  from 
fifteen  to  twenty  thousand  feet,  whether  at 
the  bottom  of  the  sea,  or  in  the  upper  air, 
we  cannot  tell.  But  the  fact  is  certain,  that 
off  the  surface  of  Wales,  south  of  Ffestiniog 
a  mass  of  solid  rock  as  high  as  the  Andes 
has  been  worn  down  and  carried  bodily 
away;  and  that  a  few  miles  south  again,  the 
peak  of  Arran  Mowddy,  which  is  now  not 
two  thousand  feet  high,  was  once  —  either 
under  the  sea  or  above  it — nearer  ten  thou- 
sand feet. 

If  I  am  asked  whither  is  all  that  enormous 
mass  of  rock— millions  of  tons— gone  ?  Where 
is  it  now  ?  I  know  not.  But  if  I  dared  to 
hazard  a  guess,  I  should  say  it  went  to  make 
the  New  Red  sandstones  of  England. 


234  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

The  New  Red  sandstones  must  have  come 
from  somewhere.  The  most  likely  region 
for  them  to  have  come  from  is  from  North 
Wales,  where,  as  we  know,  vast  masses  of 
gritty  rock  have  been  ground  off,  such  as 
would  make  fine  sandstones  if  they  had  the 
chance.  So  that  many  a  grain  of  sand  in 
Chester  walls  was  probably  once  blasted  out 
of  the  bowels  of  the  earth  into  the  old  Silurian 
sea,  and  after  a  few  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  years  repose  in  a  Snowdonian  ash -bed, 
was  sent  eastward  to  build  the  good  old  city 
and  many  a  good  town  more. 

And  the  red  marl  —  the  great  deposit  of 
red  marl  which  covers  a  wide  region  of 
England— why  should  not  it  have  come  from 
the  same  quarter  ?  Why  should  it  not  be 
simply  the  remains  of  the  Snowdon  Slate  ? 
Mud  the  slate  was,  and  into  mud  it  has 
returned.  Why  not  ?  Some  of  the  richest 


THE     SLATES    ON     THE     ROOF.  235 

red  marl  land  I  know,  is,  as  I  have  said, 
actually  being  made  now,  out  of  the  black 
slates  of  Ilfracombe,  wherever  they  are 
weathered  by  rain  and  air.  The  chemical 
composition  is  the  same.  The  difference  in 
colour  between  black  slate  and  red  marl, 
is  caused  simply  by  the  oxidation  of  the  iron 
in  the  slate. 

And  if  my  readers  want  a  probable  cause 
why  the  sandstones  lie  undermost,  and  the 
red  marl  uppermost — can  they,  not  find 
one  for  themselves  ?  I  do  not  say  that  it 
is  the  cause,  but  it  is  at  least  a  causa 
vera,  one  which  would  fully  explain  the 
fact,  though  it  may  be  explicable  in  other 
ways.  Think,  then,  or  shall  I  think  for  my 
readers  ? 

Then  do  they  not  see  that  when  the  Welsh 
mountains  were  ground  down,  the  Silurian 
strata,  being  uppermost,  would  be  ground 

19*  13 


236  TOWN    GEOLOGV. 

down  first,  and  would  go  to  make  the  lower 
strata  of  the  great  New  Red  Sandstone 
Lowland ;  and  that  being  sandy,  they  would 
make  the  sandstones.  But  wherever  they 
were  ground  through,  the  Lower  Cambrian 
slates  would  be  laid  bare ;  and  their  remains, 
being  washed  away  by  the  sea  the  last,  would 
be  washed  on  to  the  top  of  the  remains  of  the 
Silurians;  and  so  (as  in  most  cases)  the 
remains  of  the  older  rock,  when  redeposited 
by  water,  would  lie  on  the  remains  of  the 
younger  rock.  And  do  they  not  see  that 
(if  what  I  just  said  is  true)  these  slates  would 
grind  up  into  red  marl,  such  as  is  seen  over 
the  west  and  south  of  Cheshire  and  Stafford- 
shire and  far  away  into  Nottinghamshire.  The 
red  marl  must  almost  certainly  have  been 
black  slate  somewhere,  somewhen.  Why 
should  it  not  have  been  such  in  Snowdon  r 
And  why  should  not  the  slates  in  the  roof  be 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  9$-] 

the  remnants  of  the  very  beds  which  are  now 
the  marl  in  the  fields  ? 

And  thus  I  end  my  story  of  the  slates  in 
the  roof,  and  these  papers  on  Town  Geology. 
I  do  so  well  knowing  how  imperfect  they  are : 
though  not,  I  believe,  inaccurate.  They  are, 
after  all,  merely  suggestive  of  the  great 
amount  that  there  is  to  be  learnt  about  the 
face  of  the  earth  and  how  it  got  made,  even 
by  the  townsman,  who  can  escape  into  the 
country  and  exchange  the  world  of  man  for 
the  world  of  God,  only,  perhaps,  on  Sundays 
— if,  alas  !  even  then — or  only  once  a  year 
by  a  trip  in  a  steamer  or  an  excursion  train. 
Little,  indeed,  can  he  learn  of  the  planet  on 
which  he  lives.  Little  in  that  direction  is 
uiven  to  him,  and  of  him  little  shall  be 
required.  But  to  him,  for  that  very  reason, 
all  that  can  be  given  should  be  given :  he 
should  have  every  facility  for  learning  what 


238  TOWN    GEOLOGY. 

he  can  about  this  earth,  its  composition,  its 
capabilities;  lest  his  intellect,  crushed  and 
fettered  by  that  artificial  drudgery  which  we 
for  a  time  miscall  civilisation,  should  begin 
to  fancv,  as  too  many  do  already,  that  the 
world  is  composed  mainly  of  bricks  and  deal, 
and  governed  by  acts  of  parliament.  If  I 
shall  have  awakened  any  townsmen  here  and 
there  to  think  seriously  of  the  complexity, 
the  antiquity,  the  grandeur,  the  true  poetry, 
of  the  commonest  objects  around  them,  even 
the  stones  beneath  their  feet ;  if  I  shall  have 
suggested  to  them  the  solemn  thought  that 
all  these  things,  and  they  themselves  still 
more,  are  ordered  by  laws,  utterly  indepen- 
dent of  man's  will  about  them,  man's  belief 
in  them  ;  if  I  shall  at  all  have  helped  to  open 
their  eyes  that  they  may  see,  and  their  ears 
that  they  may  hear,  the  great  book  which 
is  free  to  Til  alike,  to  peasant  as  to  peer,  to 


THE    SLATES    ON    THE    ROOF.  239 

men  of  business  as  to  men  of  science,  even 
that  great  book  of  nature,  which  is,  as  Lord 
Bacon  said  of  old,  the  Word  of  God  revealed 
in  facts — then  I  shall  have  a  fresh  reason 
for  loving  that  science  of  geology,  which 
has  been  my  favourite  study  since  1  was  a 
boy. 


THE  END. 


T 


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A 


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T 


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•**- 


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"  This  book  ought  to  make  star-gazing  popular." — New  York  Herald. 

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able to  few,  and  that  most  people  have  no  idea  of  the  possibilities  of  the  more  familiar 
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Der, 


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"  No  intelligent  reader  of  this  book  but  will  feel  that  if  the  author  fails  to  set  his 
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— The  Chautauqnan. 


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This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


MftY  1  6  193 
MAY  2  9  1933 


Form  L-9-15m-ll,'27 


The  RALPH  0.  REED  LIBRARY 

DEPART  V 

UNIVERSITY  «f  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIF. 


